Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  Permitting a lass into one’s room in the dead of night was an act of pure folly, especially when one was barely clothed and the lass in only her shift. Rosalyn clung to him, carried away on a tide of weeping, forcing him to speak into her hair. “Miss Bell—Rosalyn—what’s amiss belowstairs?”

  “It’s Papa Hugh. He’s had these spells of late. Mama said . . . But I’m not to speak of it!”

  Gently he shushed her, as over her shoulder he watched the door, heart going at a gallop. Thomas had disappeared into his storeroom and shut fast the door. Had Ian any sense, he’d toss his fair cousin back into the passage and do likewise. But his arms were full of her now and . . . her waist was tiny enough to span with his hands.

  “Rosalyn.” Her name came out a croak. “Who was my uncle calling? It sounded like—”

  “His son! His dead son.”

  He’d thought so. But why should his arrival make his uncle think his son, Aidan, was alive? Surely that’s what his aunt had been implying. “That woman from the garret—it was Lily?”

  Rosalyn pulled away slightly, and he stifled the unthinking urge to draw her close again.

  “It must have been. Mama wouldn’t call for Seona.”

  He felt a jolt at the name. “Seona? I met her earlier. I thought . . .” He knew no delicate way to phrase it. “Is she some kin to ye?”

  “Kin?” Rosalyn’s lip curled. “She’s Lily’s girl, born right here at Mountain Laurel—before Mama married Papa Hugh.” Saying her stepfather’s name recalled her distress. She gave a little sob and clung to him again.

  Ian sought furiously to think. “I’m sure it’ll be all right. Ye said yourself this has happened before, aye? Should ye not return to your room?”

  Preferably before her mother came back up the stairs.

  “Oh.” It was a breathless sound, as though she’d just noticed the rumpled bed, or the fact they stood beside it, barely clad. And embracing. She extricated herself from his arms, leaving his shirt damp, his flesh burning. A strand of her hair snagged in the stubble of his beard. She reached to free it, then caressed his face and stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against the corner of his mouth.

  Startled by the gesture, Ian grasped her hand and might have pulled her to him, save that in place of her moonlit face he suddenly saw another.

  “Rosalyn. Go.” His voice croaked.

  For a frozen second she stared, then stepped back from him.

  “Yes—of course. I’m better now.” At the door she paused, a swirl of shift and flowing hair. “I’m glad you’re here, Cousin.”

  His heart was thundering again. When she was gone, he sank onto the tick and waited for its pounding to settle. That other face still swam before his eyes, more vivid than he’d seen it in years. The mouth that smiled and hid its secrets. The eyes that lingered, holding his too long.

  Five years, and still they rose up to haunt him—and complicate his life.

  He might never forgive Thomas for throwing that history in his face as he’d done on their journey. The Quaker, Benjamin Eden, had sat by the fire in their camp while off in the shadows by the picketed horses, Thomas had done his utmost to convince Ian his quest to pose as a slave was reasonable.

  “What of your coopering?” Ian had protested, the first objection that sprang to mind. But Thomas had anticipated that.

  “Your uncle grows tobacco. He’ll need hogsheads.”

  “Ye walked away from a position in a thriving port like Boston on the chance a backcountry planter won’t already have a cooper?”

  “Like you walked away from your apprenticeship to spend the past five years trapping furs?”

  “I didn’t walk away.”

  “True, Ian. You skulked.”

  Ian would have thought Thomas would back down, given the warning that must have flashed in his gaze. He hadn’t.

  “You ever mean to tell me what happened to end it so badly? I never set foot in Cambridge, never saw your master—or his wife. Half his age, they say. And there you were a lad in their home, growing up in front of her eyes. Occurred to me she might’ve been the one to start it . . .”

  But Thomas couldn’t have imagined the whole of it. No one could have.

  With a jerk of his head Ian dispelled both memories and ghosts. He got up and shut the door.

  Morning birdsong wove through his senses, muddling dreams of Boston with memories of turmoil in the night. It took a moment to realize he hadn’t dreamt his uncle calling out. Or his cousin coming out of the dark. Into his arms.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face and groaned.

  Even after he dressed and shaved, the rest of the household seemed asleep. Belowstairs all was quiet, his uncle’s door firmly shut. After a moment’s indecision, he stepped out the back door.

  Sunlight splashed the east-facing ridge beyond the orchard with a liquid light that flowed downslope, oozing toward him up the track bordering the fields, pooling in pockets down by the stable. In the shelter of the house the kitchen-yard lay in shadow. Linking house and kitchen was a latticed breezeway, built over a flagstone walk and entwined with pale-pink roses. The smell of bacon frying competed with their scent as he passed beneath, minding how, as a visiting lad, he’d slipped into the kitchen between mealtimes in hope of wheedling a morsel from the cook, Naomi. Most often he’d been successful.

  The breezeway ended a pace or two short of the kitchen door, standing wide to the morning’s cool. Ian paused to pluck a rose, its petals dew-beaded, then stepped into the open. Over the high garden pales to his left he glimpsed a figure slipping from sight among the pole beans.

  The girl from the upstairs passage. Had she seen him first?

  “Think this time he gonna stay?”

  The question, a child’s, had issued from the kitchen.

  “We must bide and see what the Almighty wills,” replied a voice Ian recognized: that of Malcolm, his uncle’s oldest slave. Creaky as a rusted hinge now, it had lost none of its improbable Scots burr, acquired as a boy when he was purchased by Mountain Laurel’s original homesteader; Duncan Cameron had taught the handful of slaves he’d bought to settle Mountain Laurel—sixty, seventy years past—to speak Gaelic so he needn’t suffer English spoken in his presence. Ian recalled his da and those left of the original slaves nattering on in the tongue when they visited years ago. The Gaelic had flown too fast to follow; strange hearing it come from those dark-skinned faces. Was Malcolm now the last of them?

  “Why didn’t he stay on before?” asked the same childish voice.

  “His daddy didna wish it.”

  “He don’t got to do what his daddy say no more?”

  “Or his daddy changed his mind,” said the old man.

  “I heard the misses carrying on how he so handsome. Think he’ll marry one of ’em?”

  There was a snort from a third party, a woman. “If Miss Lucinda have her way, he will—never mind all that swooning at table.”

  “Why he want to come back here for anyway?” the child asked.

  Ian stepped up to the threshold. “That’s one question easily answered. Naomi’s cooking lured me back.”

  It was dim inside the kitchen. At first all he could see was the gleam of firelight on copper and the sway of braided onions above his head. Faces emerged from shadow, in varying shades of brown, blank as the crocks lining the pantry shelves. The white-bearded man seated on a corner stool recovered first. Stiffly he stood, straight-limbed but stooped over a hand-whittled stick.

  Ian strode inside, stopping at the long worktable to grip the man’s arm. Startled at the feel of shrunken flesh, he gentled his touch. “Malcolm.”

  Dark eyes peered up at him, appraising from deep-netted wrinkles in a sun-spotted face. “I kent ye’d make a tallish man, Mister Ian, but ye’ve outstripped my expectations. I’m thinkin’ ye didna pine overmuch for Naomi’s vittles. Someone’s been feeding ye.”

  Still plump in middle age, still turbaned in faded calico, Naomi had her hands wrist-deep in biscuit dough
. “You wouldn’t be hungry now, would you, Mister Ian?” As if on cue, Ian’s belly rumbled. The sound drew a giggle from behind the cook’s ample hips. “Esther, get out here and give Mister Ian proper greetin’.”

  The child obeyed. Thin-faced and bright-eyed, she put him in mind of another new face he’d seen since his arrival. “Ye’ll be Maisy’s lass, aye?”

  The girl grinned. “Uh-huh. And Jubal be my daddy. He tends Master Hugh’s horses. Yours too, I reckon.”

  “You first say, Yes, sir, when Mister Ian ask a question,” Naomi cut in when the girl drew breath.

  Esther bobbed her knees. “Yes, sir.”

  Ian extended the rose to her. Esther took it, wide-eyed. She thrust it at Naomi as if it were a live coal and scampered out the door.

  A pop of grease drew Ian’s attention to the kitchen’s fourth occupant, who set a platter of bacon on the table and covered it with a cloth.

  “Mister Ian,” Lily said with a faint lilt that minded him of his kin. “Welcome back to Mountain Laurel.” No trace of the previous night’s upset was visible in her countenance. Not even time, it seemed, had ruffled the smoothness of her skin. She appeared unchanged. “Have some bacon to tide ye over.”

  “There’s plenty for the table.” Naomi beckoned Malcolm. “Daddy, pone’s cool to eat.”

  The old man settled on a stool before a plate bearing a slab of corn bread drizzled with molasses. Ian realized the wheaten-flour biscuits Naomi was arranging in a pan, and likely everything else, were destined for the house table. “Thank ye for yesterday’s fine supper. We arrived unannounced and put ye to a deal of trouble.”

  In the beat of silence that followed his words, Ian felt a twinge of unease and wondered if this unannounced visit wasn’t an intrusion. Then Naomi said, “We heard you didn’t have much appetite.”

  “I mean to rectify that presently.” He lifted the cloth and took a slice of bacon, biting off a mouthful before he noticed Malcolm bowed over his plate.

  “Bethankit, Lord Jesus,” the old man prayed, “for health and strength, for this food to keep us in both. Bethankit for bringin’ Mister Ian and his lad, Thomas, safe to journey’s end, and for Thy loving-kindness to us all. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Naomi and Lily echoed, looking up from their work.

  Ian swallowed, but the bacon felt lodged in his throat. When no one else spoke, he ventured, “There were a couple of lads when I was here before. Maybe they’re field hands now? The older one, he’d a funny scar on his forehead, shaped like a fishing hook.”

  This time the silence stretched. And stretched.

  “You meaning Ruby’s boys, Sammy and Eli.” Naomi busied herself cracking eggs into a bowl. “It was Sammy had the scar, but they gone from here, Mister Ian. Sold some years back.”

  The words fell like stones into a dry well. When at last they hit bottom, Ian asked, “And their mother, Ruby?”

  No one returned his gaze or gave him answer. Ruby was dead, he guessed, or sold away like her sons.

  He backed toward the door. “I’ll leave ye to breakfast. It’s good to see ye again.”

  Ian stepped into the morning sunlight in time to hear Lucinda’s voice lifted in complaint. Seconds later the window of his room banged shut. Maisy’s face peered down at him. He hesitated, then giving way to impulse, slipped through the gate into the garden.

  He found Seona still among the pole beans, crouched between the shaded rows, pinching off the pods and dropping them into a shallow basket. The faded-blue kerchief she wore barely restrained the dark mass of ringlets tumbling to her waist.

  “Seona?”

  She shot to her feet, snatching up the basket, spilling a green cascade over the side.

  Ian hurried forward along the row, ducking the leafy canopy where the runners overgrew their stakes. “Let me help.”

  She knelt again. “No, Mister Ian. You’ll get yourself dirty.”

  He laughed at that but squatted back on his heels while she gathered up the beans. “I didn’t mean to give ye a fright. I didn’t want to go back inside yet.”

  Clutching the basket to her hip, securely this time, she stood. So did he, inclining his head to keep it out of the arching vines. Her eyes flashed up at him, bright even in that sheltered light, the brows above them a graceful sweep. Lily’s girl, born right here at Mountain Laurel. He judged she’d have been maybe six years old when he visited with his da. He minded a small girl, vaguely. Maybe Thomas was right and there was much he hadn’t noticed.

  “About yesterday, in the passage . . . if I caused ye trouble, I’m sorry.”

  A ladybug swooped between them and landed on her hand, red as a spot of blood. She flicked her wrist to shoo it away. “You didn’t cause no trouble, Mister Ian.”

  “Good,” he said, though he wasn’t certain she spoke truthfully. He swallowed the lingering taste of bacon. “I hadn’t met my cousins. Not that they’re truly my cousins—but ye know that, aye?”

  She seemed about to speak but once again was robbed of the chance.

  “Seona! Where are you?”

  Seona flinched. “That’s Miss Rosalyn. Begging your pardon, Mister Ian.”

  He pressed back against the vines so she could pass, then watched her disappear around the end of the row.

  “There you are,” Rosalyn said. “Leave that basket. I need your help inside.”

  Seona replied but Ian didn’t catch her words. He lingered among the vines, picking a handful of beans. Emerging from the row, he dropped them into Seona’s abandoned basket, then glanced up at the house. Another face withdrew from an upstairs window, this one pale. Judith, he thought.

  He’d started off wrong-footed with the lot of them, kin and slave. Deciding to make a thorough job of it, he stooped for the basket, shot a grin at the fluttering curtains, and ducked back into the bean rows.

  4

  Ian rolled his aching neck, then stared at the stack of ledgers on his uncle’s desk. Each chronicled a year of Mountain Laurel’s affairs: weather, planting dates, crop conditions, harvest yields; the health of livestock, family, and slaves. Lily, he’d learned, was a midwife, her services sought by folk of the surrounding hills. Noted also were visits to the Quakers’ gristmill and a lumber mill at Chesterfield Plantation; journeys to Salisbury, Fayetteville, Salem; visits from his uncle’s solicitor; debts accrued and, less and less punctually, accounts paid. Mountain Laurel operated on a prospective yearly income from crops, with purchases made in expectation of that income. But for several years now the value of the main cash crop, tobacco, had failed to keep pace with expenditures.

  His uncle had made no mention of the farm’s mounting debt when he invited Ian into his room, following a morning spent helping with the tobacco harvest, now into its second day. He’d merely plunked the ledgers onto the fall front of his desk, expressed his wish to give Ian “a sense of the place, aye?” and taken himself off to the stable in hopes that his new mare was finally ready to drop her late-season foal.

  Ian had dutifully skimmed the most recent columns penned in his uncle’s scrawling hand, then, in growing concern, gone back further into the records, to the time of Hugh Cameron’s second marriage.

  Forced to sell her Tidewater plantation in payment of her late husband’s debts, Lucinda Bell had retained two slaves—Maisy and Jubal—a modest carriage with its team, and an impressive array of household furnishings. Even in his uncle’s room the trappings of former wealth were evident. Fine hangings on the high-post bed, a richly patterned carpet spanning the pinewood floor, the Hepplewhite desk at which Ian sat with its triple finials and glass-paneled bookcase—all gave the illusion of increased income. But the trimmings of affluence, and her daughters, were all that remained of Lucinda’s life in Virginia.

  There were a lot of books. Ian opened the case above the desk to visually caress the wealth—volumes of Shakespeare, Defoe, Swift, Johnson, Locke, Boswell, Smollett, and Fielding. A collection of poems by that young Scots Lowlander, Burns. Most were leather-bound,
some worked in gilt. A familiar spine caught his eye, a book of Norse legends he’d read as a lad.

  Ian tugged it free. Inside was an inscription in his da’s hand: 1767. Inverness. My first Bound Book. “Hugin and Munin fly each day the wide earth over. I fear for Hugin lest he fare not back—yet I watch the more for Munin.” As we fly the earth over, Brother . . . Think and Remember.

  Twin to one his parents owned, the book bore early evidence of Robert Cameron’s distinctive tooled style, though the line inscribed about Hugin and Munin—that mythical pair of ravens the Norse god Odin sent out to roam the earth each morning—was an interesting glimpse into his da’s mind. Robert Cameron rarely spoke of the past, or the father and much older half brothers he’d lost during the failed Jacobite Rising, when the Highland clans fell at Culloden. Including Hugh, imprisoned and exiled to what was then the colonies.

  Think and Remember. Ian brought the book to his nose, smelled the aging leather, and for an instant was back in his da’s shop in Boston.

  He returned the book and leaned back against the chair’s scrolled uprights. His uncle’s room was warming as midday approached and despite the open window smelled of pipe tobacco. He’d been smelling tobacco—in the air, on his person, in his sleep—for the past two days.

  His uncle had joined them at the breakfast table after that first tumultuous night, a haggardness about his eyes the only indication anything untoward had occurred. Ian had wanted to speak of it, but the presence of his aunt and cousins—particularly Rosalyn with her wide blue eyes—had curtailed the urge to venture the topic. After breakfast his uncle, anxious for his new foal to drop, had lingered for a quarter hour at the stable before joining Ian and Thomas to ride to the fields, where the tobacco harvest had begun.

  His uncle’s overseer had met them as they’d reined their horses into the shade of a bordering chestnut. Jackson Dawes bunked in a cabin nearer the slave quarters than the house, Ian had been told, and aside from his duties as overseer mainly kept to himself.

  “Pryce’s hands doing their share?” Uncle Hugh inquired.