Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  “Seems so,” Thomas agreed. There was no doubt about the smile now.

  Eastbound clouds, white against dazzling blue, raced shadows across the ridge flanking his uncle’s land. The sight fed Ian’s soul, as did the moment’s quiet, alone on the front veranda. While solitude suited his mood, idleness didn’t. His hands wanted occupation. He flexed them, turning that revelation over like a fine piece of wood. He lacked a lathe, but he had his miter box, handsaws, planes, augers, chisels—and, admittedly, a rusty set of skills.

  Only one remedy for that, and he’d promised Catriona, after all. He called her to mind, poised at the foot of his sickbed back in spring, furious as no one but a stripling of a sister could be that he’d run off to the wilds and stayed gone five whole years, only to slink back threatening to die of wound fever. But he might yet make it up to her.

  ’Tis a table desk you’ll make for me, Ian. And I’ll have none of that common fan embellishment on it. I want a desk with morning glories. With as many morning glories as it will aesthetically sustain.

  An artist born, Catriona, one who knew her mind.

  Ian’s thoughts swirled now, designs blossoming from imaginary wood grain as his gaze wandered over the yard sloping down to the stables, where, deep in oak shade, Jubal sat oiling tack. Leaving the veranda, he strode across the drive and down the yard into the pungent scents of hay and manure, heavy on the warm air.

  Jubal stood at his approach, cloth in hand. “Mister Ian, you be taking the roan back out?”

  The man had likely just finished grooming Ruaidh after the ride back from meeting. “I may do. I’ll see to him if so.”

  At the sound of his voice, Ruaidh’s whinny pierced the air. Ian reached the box midway along the aisle and with gruff affection took the horse’s questing head between his hands. A ride would be good, he decided, but before he could heft his saddle from a nearby bench, a high-pitched squeal rent the air.

  Abandoning the saddle, Ian moved to the far doorway, open today to the rear stable-yard, and halted at the spectacle unfolding there.

  Skirts kilted, bare feet flying, Seona and Esther were attempting to catch a shoat. Shaking with mirth, old Malcolm leaned against the farrowing pen, where a sow and the rest of her half-grown litter milled and grunted encouragement to the escapee.

  “Esther—he’s coming at you!”

  “I see it!” Esther made a grab for the shoat, skinny arms closing round its hindquarters. “Be still you—ow!”

  The shoat kicked free and bolted, aiming for Seona, whose skirt chose the moment she lunged to come tumbling round her ankles. She tripped, landing in a heap. Dodging her, the shoat reached the pen and snuffled along its length in search of entry.

  Malcolm bent to slap his knee. “That be one pertinacious wee pig, is all I can say!”

  “Is that all?” Seona brushed her skirts down and stood, hair curling round her shoulders like a wind-driven cloud. She fixed Malcolm with a gimlet glare. “What use is a man if all he does is hang back spouting fancy words when his womenfolk need a hand?”

  Impervious to this blaze of indignation, Malcolm shook his head. “No’ a bit o’ use, lassie!”

  Esther hadn’t taken her eyes off the rooting shoat. “Hush now! It ain’t looking.” She darted for it, but the pig was too quick. With a refractory grunt it dashed for the stable.

  Though convulsed with silent laughter, Ian was ready. He burst from the shadows and swooped low as the shoat made to scoot past. Embracing the squealing pig like a barrel, he staggered into the yard, rolled, and fetched up on his back with the animal kicking at the sky. Its protests split the air, which had otherwise gone still. Ian pinned the struggling creature to his chest and peered between its ears at two wide-eyed faces, one dark, one honey-gold.

  “That,” he said, breathing hard, “is how ye catch a pig.”

  Malcolm wiped at tearing eyes. “Mister Ian, ye’ve saved the Reynolds’ bacon. I dinna think these lasses would have shown it a scrap of mercy had they got their hands on it again.”

  Ian hoisted the animal in his arms and stood, surveying the pen. “This isn’t one of ours?”

  “Not no more it ain’t.” Indignation unlocked Esther’s tongue. “It’s the piglet Mister Reynold, over yon—” she waved in the direction of the wood beyond the house—“bought off Master Hugh. But it ain’t cottoned to the notion.”

  “’Tis the third time we’ve seen it back,” Malcolm said.

  “Huh-uh.” Esther pushed out her bottom lip. “It’s the fourth.”

  “Seems ye’ve an intractable case on your hands,” Ian said and saw the corner of Seona’s mouth curl.

  “More fancy words from menfolk,” she murmured.

  “An incurable lot,” Ian agreed. “Though hopefully I’ve atoned to some degree for the general uselessness of men.” Clutching the shoat to his chest, he made them an old-fashioned leg.

  Esther giggled, while color bloomed in Seona’s cheeks.

  “They’re neighbors, then, the Reynolds?”

  “Yes, sir,” Seona said. “Mama looks in on Miss Cecily regular.”

  A page from his uncle’s ledgers came to mind—a John Reynold owned a bordering tract of land, a parcel Hugh Cameron had sold off two years back—an instant before the shoat landed a kick to his ribs, and he winced.

  “Esther, dinna stand gawping,” Malcolm said. “Go tell Ally he’s to take the pig back to Mister John.”

  “I’ve yet to meet the man,” Ian said. “I’d be pleased to have occasion to do so—should someone care to show me the way.” He flicked a glance at Seona, with a small surge of anticipation, but Esther was too quick.

  “I’ll show you, Mister Ian.” The child shot toward the house before anyone could object, calling back, “Let me tell my mama where I’m bound.”

  “She’s meant to be on her way to the kitchen.” Seona brushed at her skirts, stirring up a musky sweetness from the folds. Lavender.

  “Clever miss.” Not bothering to hide his regret, Ian hoisted the pig under one arm and strode after the girl.

  Mister Ian’s hair had been tailed back Sunday-smart when he came lunging from the stable fit to scare her to death. Now it was tangled loose on his shoulders. Dirt streaked the back of his shirt. Though come morning she’d be the one scrubbing it clean, Seona reckoned it worth a kettle of laundry to see a white man do what he’d just done.

  He wore a belt sewn with tiny colored beads and hung with a wicked-long knife. Indian stuff, she reckoned, as she watched him striding toward the house after Esther. Even with a kicking pig tucked under one arm, Mister Ian moved like a painter-cat, all golden and smooth.

  Like a wildcat out the woods. Naomi had called that right.

  A crumpled blue ribbon lay on the ground where he’d tackled the pig. Bending, she slipped it into her skirt pocket, glancing at Malcolm, who was staring toward the house too.

  “Mister Ian doesna seem overworrit for his dignity,” he observed.

  “There’s some would call that refreshing, for white folk.” Seona gave her petticoat a final smack with the flat of her hand. “I best see how Mama and Naomi are getting on.”

  “Aye, ye do that. And give Mister Ian his hair ribbon back when next ye see him.”

  Seona marched off to the kitchen, not letting Malcolm see her burning face. Lily and Naomi were up to their elbows in baking when she came in. “Didn’t y’all hear the ruckus in the yard?”

  “We heard.” Naomi added a handful of flour to something in a bowl, then clasped it to her bosom and set to stirring. “No time to stand gaping at that fool pig.”

  Lily folded a mound of dough and gave it a punch. “Who caught it this time?”

  “You’ll never guess—Mister Ian! He’s toting it back, with Esther showing the way.”

  “That child.” Naomi whacked her spoon against the bowl like it was a bare backside. “When I was a bitty thing, weren’t no running off from this kitchen at the drop of a hat, never mind it be Sunday. As for Mister Ian—” sh
e set the bowl down with a thunk—“reckon he could have found his way.”

  Seona’s hand dipped into her pocket and found the ribbon, cool and silky. “You should’ve seen him, Naomi, rolling in the dirt and coming up with that pig in his arms, grinning like he’d hung the moon.”

  Lily was watching her. “It’s not wise, going round Mister Ian with your hair unbound. I’ve told ye, girl-baby.”

  Sighing, Seona pulled her hand from her pocket and set to work on her rebellious hair, fingering it into a plait, yanking at hopeless snarls. Maisy could put Esther’s hair in braids and it would stay put for days. Why couldn’t hers have come out that way?

  “Mama, what does intractable mean?”

  “Where’d ye hear such a word?”

  Her fingers flew, working down to the ends of her hair. She thought of tying it off with the blue ribbon, then thought better. “Mister Ian said it of the Reynolds’ pig.”

  “Can’t mean nothing nice, then,” Naomi said.

  “What y’all making for the supper?”

  “Green beans, beef and carrot pie, and later on a sugar cake.”

  Seona eyed a basket on the bench by the door, getting herself an idea. “Miss Judith fancies blueberries.”

  “She do,” Naomi agreed. “But if she wanted blueberries on her birthday, she should’ve been born last month.”

  “There might be some left. Can’t hurt to look.”

  “You done the weeding and picked the beans. No more you need do ’til supper. But your mama and me could find work for you to do, if you that bored.” Naomi shot a meaningful glance at a row of carrots waiting to be chopped.

  “Picking berries ain’t work.” Figuring a quick escape had worked for Esther, Seona snatched up the basket and ducked out the door.

  6

  “I’ve about had my fill of ye,” Ian declared through gritted teeth. “Fractious, prickly wee . . .” Words failed him—decent ones at least.

  He’d left Esther at the trail’s fork with the child’s assurance he’d find the Reynolds’ cabin at the end of the right-hand branch. Near as he could figure, he’d trudged the instructed half mile farther, following the footpath—an erratic track no doubt blazed by inebriated deer—over, around, and all but under the wooded ridge. What had he to show for his good deed? A welter of bruises from thrashing hooves and a patience badly frayed.

  Good deed. The thought reminded him unpleasantly of Benjamin Eden and another conversation with the Quaker—the one Thomas didn’t know he’d overheard.

  After argument had failed to dissuade Thomas from following him another mile south—and before the Quaker had seen through the slave charade—Ian had stalked off to be alone for a space, returning at dusk through a drizzling rain to find the camp shifted to a pine thicket for shelter. Ian had passed soft-footed under cover of the falling rain into the range of Eden’s voice.

  “I would speak a concern to thee, friend.”

  A pot lid had clanked; the smell of cooking beans had set Ian’s mouth to watering. Keeping to shadows, he’d crept round the baggage for a better view.

  Beneath the shelter of needled boughs, the Quaker had set up a campstool. A journal lay open on his knees. Firelight glinted off an inkwell nestled in pine straw at his feet, but the hand holding the quill had stilled. “Thee needn’t go with this man. A house, and people disposed to aid thee, lies eastward on the Susquehanna. Or hast thee a wife or child in bondage, to hold thee to Ian Cameron?”

  Squatting at the fire, Thomas stirred the beans. “Neither. Reckon Mastah Ian will look after me in Carolina. Won’t let no meanness trouble me.”

  Eden leaned forward, intent. “Do not believe it, friend. I have observed the effects of slaveholding upon even a man deemed God-fearing. That narrative I see in thy possession says it best.”

  “‘But is not the slave trade entirely at war with the heart of man?’” Thomas quoted, as no slave ought to be able to do. “‘And surely that which is begun by breaking down the barriers of virtue involves in its continuance destruction to every principle . . .’”

  Eden eyed him, startled but thoughtful. “Would thee say Ian Cameron is a God-fearing man?”

  Silence fell, troubled by the rain’s patter, the fire’s snap, the sound of tree frogs in the wood. Thomas said, “Don’t know as it be my call to say who, or what, he fear.”

  “Surely ’tis thy concern,” the Quaker pressed. “The acquiring of chattel wealth is a slow corruption to the soul. It will be to his soul. I entreat thee to consider my offer.”

  Thomas hadn’t, of course—stubborn fool. Ian had made his presence known. Shortly after, Benjamin Eden had called Thomas’s bluff.

  Trudging through the trees with a pig thrashing in his arms, Ian shook off the memory—and promptly snagged his shirt shouldering through a clump of elderberry overhanging the path. Vexed and sweating, he tore free, broke through the tangle, and halted. Swelling warm on the air was the most tantalizing aroma he’d encountered outside the range of Naomi’s kitchen.

  Following his nose, he soon emerged from the thinning trees.

  The Reynold cabin was a tidy affair, situated in a clearing skirted on three sides by woods, on the fourth by a cornfield planted up to the door-yard. Beyond the cabin rose a barn that dwarfed the dwelling. In the barn’s shadow was a man, kneeling in the dirt by a fenced pen, hands slack, head bowed.

  The man’s head jerked up when the shoat loosed a squeal. He stood and came into the sunlight, black-haired and summer-bronzed, an expression of wonder on his mild features as he hurried to intercept Ian.

  “Might I have the name of the man come bearing the most immediate answer to prayer I’ve ever received?” he called, not long out of London by his speech. “Or is it an angel I address, sent to restore our winter’s bacon?”

  Before Ian could reply to either query, a second voice spoke. “Certainement, chéri. An angel he is. With that hair, what else?”

  Ian tossed a tangle of that hair from his eyes as a woman emerged from the cabin. Like the man she was dark-haired, though her features were fine, her skin porcelain-fair, her belly vastly swollen with child. The shoat gave his belly another kick. Wincing through his teeth, Ian said, “I doubt an angel would have employed the language I’ve had cause to utter since taking up acquaintance with your . . . pig.”

  The man’s smile broadened. “I daresay the creature would try a saint’s patience.”

  “I’m hardly that. Ian Cameron, nephew to your neighbor at Mountain Laurel, and I’d shake your hand if relieved of this burden.”

  “At once, then.”

  The transfer was made, squeals and flailing notwithstanding. Ian passed a grimed shirtsleeve across his brow. “Ye’ve my gratitude, sir.”

  The man hoisted the heavy shoat for a better grip. “John Reynold. And the gratitude is mine. We were discussing which to undertake first, chasing down this rogue or repairing its pen, when I looked up to see you striding from the wood, pig returned, predicament solved.”

  “We?” Ian glanced beyond the man toward the barn for sign of a third party—a son, perhaps, or servant.

  “The Almighty and I.” Ian snapped his gaze back to find John Reynold smiling, in earnest. “But look you—the matter of a handshake lies between us.”

  Ian’s mouth twitched. “My hands are at liberty.”

  “Whereas mine . . . as you see.” Humor glinted in Reynold’s brown eyes. “What say you? How do we proceed?”

  “Bouffon.” Reynold’s wife shook her head. “Put the little scoundrel in the cabin, s’il te plaît. I will distract it with sweet rolls while you repair its abode.”

  “Madam,” Ian said, “I’ll not presume the offer of sweet rolls for scoundrels extends to me, but if I may be so bold—I’d have walked twice the distance with yon wee hellion kicking me every step for a whiff of whatever that is ye’re baking.”

  The woman beamed. “Merci vraiment. For your trouble you shall have better than a whiff.”

  Reynold thrust th
e shoat into the cabin and shut the door. “Ian Cameron, may I present my wife, Marguerite Cécile Louise Reynold.”

  Reynold’s very pregnant wife was dressed in homespun, besmeared with flour, yet there was an air about her that made Ian want to doff his hat—had he worn one. He bowed as she dipped an awkward curtsy.

  “I am happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cameron,” she said. “You will not start for home without your promised reward?”

  Ian drew an exaggerated sniff. “Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am.”

  “Bien. But you must call me Cecily, as I am named since leaving France.” Exultant grunts issued from the cabin; alarm widened Cecily Reynold’s eyes. “I for the present must leave you to John. Merci.”

  As his wife wedged herself through the opened door, unleashing a barrage of French upon the shoat, John Reynold turned to Ian. “If you’ll permit me the comparison, I feel rather like Job.”

  Scrambling through his dusty recollection of Old Testament Scripture, Ian frowned. “I don’t recall Job’s wife baking sweet rolls to comfort him in his trials.”

  “Verily. It was the book’s last chapter I had in mind. ‘So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.’”

  Ian shot him a wry glance. “Ye’ve a pig raising a ruckus in your cabin and the dubious honor of my company.”

  “And should you have both time and inclination,” Reynold said, “I’d ask you to honor me with the latter whilst I attend to the former.”

  “I’ll lend ye more than company, if another pair of hands can serve.”

  Reynold gave Ian’s shoulder an amiable thump, then regarded the knife at his belt. “You’ve showed yourself a proper hand at catching pigs. How do you whittling pegs?”

  “Oh,” Ian replied as nonchalantly as he could, “I’m told I’ve some skill with wood.”

  They sat in the porch shade, soiled, sweating, replete with the satisfaction of a finished task—and sweet rolls that tasted even better than they’d smelled. John Reynold licked a crumb from his finger. “Normally I’d refrain from such work on the Sabbath, but necessity is unmindful of the day it visits.”