by Lori Benton
“I don’t know. . . .” She bit her lower lip, indecision palpable. He waited, uncertain which way she would swing. At last she said, barely above a whisper, “What would I draw with?”
He held back the grin straining to break free. “Ye’ve never held a quill, I take it? No? What about a lead?”
“No, sir. Just bits of charcoal.” He could see the pulse at the base of her throat, hammering to match his own. “But if you got one to lend me . . . reckon I could learn.”
Little Robin Reynold’s head lay warm in the bend of Seona’s arm, under the dogwood where they’d spread a coverlet to sit.
Miss Cecily leaned in close. “You see, Seona? He is looking at you.”
Seona doubted four days was old enough to be seeing her face clearly. Her mama would know, but since Miss Cecily and her baby were thriving, Lily had been called back to work at home. It was Seona who’d come to collect the birthing fee Miss Lucinda named—one of Miss Cecily’s fine laying hens—and snatch herself a visit.
It was balm to sit in the dogwood shade with a breeze cooling her neck, putting off thought of the endless work waiting back down the footpath. Laundry in the washhouse, apples to press, summer’s last garden gleanings to put up for the winter. What was waiting in Mister Ian’s shop . . . She couldn’t have put that out of mind had she wanted to.
After dinner had been served and cleaned up, she’d slipped in to find him looking over the sketches of morning glory vines she’d added to his book of drawings over the past two days—and known right off he liked how she’d put that lead-stick to work.
“Especially this one,” he’d said, pointing to her own favorite. “There’s good movement in this one.”
That had puzzled her. “Mister Ian, it ain’t moving. How could it?”
He’d laughed softly, then bent near and traced the drawing with a fingertip. “See how ye’ve drawn the main vine to coil left to right, yet the flowers and this smaller tendril at the end turn the eye back over the design? That’s what I mean. It keeps your eye moving.”
Such a notion hadn’t entered her head when she arranged the bit of vine cut from the garden pales. All she’d done was poke at it until how it lay pleased her, not thinking why. The way Mister Ian talked about her drawing was like showing her a door in the big house to a room she never knew was there. Turned out it was more than just her fancy, why certain of her drawings pleased her more than others. Principles of design, he called it.
With her head so crowded with principles, she’d near forgot she was meant to go fetch the hen from Miss Cecily. When she’d said as much, Mister Ian had asked did she mind his company on the way since he wanted to go see Mister John.
Only thing she minded were the questions piling up in her head, budging up against all those principles. Things to ask Mister Ian—about drawing, about his sister the artist, about the desk he was building, about his life before he came to them—would tumble through her thoughts when she was weeding the garden or boiling wash or doing a dozen other things. But whenever he was nigh, the two of them shut up in the shop, she couldn’t squeeze a one past her lips. She’d sit on a low stool behind him, skirt hiding the bit of vine laid out on the floor. If anyone came seeking Mister Ian—or her—she’d tuck what she was doing out of sight and pretend to be gathering wood shavings. He let some fall for her to gather, just in case.
She didn’t dare speak of it to a soul at home. No matter what Mister Ian said, she couldn’t shake the fear someone would put a stop to it, or worse, if she got caught. Yet there was such joy in what she was doing it made her want to dance and shout. And tell someone.
“Comment ça va?”
It was the question Miss Cecily always started with when she got a notion to teach Seona some French words. She scrambled for the ones she already knew. “Ça va . . . bien.”
She laid the baby on the coverlet in the dappled shade, feeling Miss Cecily eyeing her.
“You are different today, Seona. Dis-moi, je t’en prie?”
Would she tell her? “I don’t know if I can.”
Miss Cecily’s head tilted. “Is it the language over which you stumble? Then never mind the French. Just tell me.”
Seona glanced toward the cornfield, where Mister Ian and John Reynold had gone to check the crop. Turning back, she caught the hope on Miss Cecily’s face. Before she lost the tiny scrap of courage to do so, she blurted, “Mister Ian’s letting me draw for him. I’m helping him with a desk he’s making. I been drawing the likeness of things since I was a girl. But no one else knows.”
Miss Cecily’s slender dark brows soared high. “Seona, alors. That is . . . magnifique.”
Magnificent. It was that. And mighty frightening.
“But you have done this drawing in secret, you say?” Miss Cecily asked. “How then did Ian come to know this of you?”
Seona touched the baby’s cheek. His eyelids minded her of flower petals, so fine-veined. She minded how blue Mister Ian’s eyes had looked when he praised her drawings, the warm-wood smell of his hair when he bent near.
“I never meant him to know,” she said. “He found me out.”
The Reynolds’ corn stood tall, tasseled ears thrusting through brown blades. John peeled back a husk to reveal the kernels.
“Soon?” Ian asked, peering at the ear.
“Very. This hot summer dried the ears early. The green corn ripened early too.” As they headed for the cabin, John tossed a grin over his shoulder, pressing through the stalks in his wake. “Ever been to a corn-shucking?”
“I’m a town lad, John. My father raises books.” And the people of Callum Lindsay’s settlement had had different traditions.
“Town lad, eh?” John quirked a brow at the tomahawk adorning Ian’s belt. “You should come, then. It’s a deal of work, but quite the frolic, too. Singing, dancing—”
“Sweet rolls?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll be there,” Ian promised. “So, is it to be tobacco in the new field, or Indian corn?”
John paused, letting him catch up. “There’s some swear tobacco’s what a man must seed if his farm’s to profit him. But I’m convinced it’s too hard on the soil.”
“Aye. So I’ve gathered. I’ll be clearing some of my uncle’s higher acreage for new planting come spring.”
“Your uncle has acres to spare—for now. Eventually he’ll run out of suitable land to clear.”
“And fast, if my aunt has any say. She speaks of naught but cotton since she heard of that contraption Pryce is building.”
“I’ve seen the plans for the gin. Intriguing, I’ll admit.”
“Will ye go to cotton, then?”
John fingered a corn leaf, eyes lit with an inner spark. “I’ll tell you what I’d do if the Almighty were to drop a bounty from heaven straight into my outstretched arms—had I means to keep us fed for a while without a cash crop, in other words. I’d grow trees.”
Ian snorted. “Ye’ve still trees covering most of your land.”
John waved a hand to the wooded ridges surrounding his cornfield. “But who can say it won’t soon be fences, not forest, that mark our lots? I’ve Robin to consider. I want him to know this land as I’ve known it, and his sons after him. Not a treeless desert with soil too lean to sustain them. I’m their steward, see? I must take the long view.”
Before Ian could reply, Cecily’s charming laughter rang out. Drawn to the sound like a homing pigeon, John hurried to the end of the row. Ian followed. They emerged from the corn to see Seona and Cecily beneath the dogwood that shaded the cabin-yard, wee Robin between them on a coverlet.
“What new astonishment has my son performed?” John inquired, ducking beneath a low-hanging bough to kneel beside his beaming wife.
“He smiled, chéri. Was it not a smile, Seona?”
Ian ducked the bough and straightened. Though the tips of his boots were mere inches from her, Seona kept her head bent, her eyes fixed on the baby.
“I reckon, Mis
s Cecily.”
The bairn gave a prodigious yawn. His parental audience made fitting sounds of admiration.
Ian grinned at their besotted fascination, until he saw what else lay on the blanket. A tiny drawing on a scrap of paper, scarcely more than a few lines and shadings: the curve of a cradled head, the stub of a nose, eyes half-lidded in utter contentment. Seona clutched the string-wrapped lead Ian had lent her. He hadn’t known she’d brought it out of the shop.
John spotted the half-finished portrait. “What’s this?”
“Seona’s been doing some drawing for me,” he explained hastily. “At my request. Chisel and plane I can master, but I’m no great hand at sketching. I wanted something special for Catriona—my sister.”
Thoughts bombarded in the silence that followed. Had Cecily somehow guessed Seona’s secret and pressed this demonstration upon her, or had Seona confessed it? A half-guilty glance, dappled green as the light through the dogwood boughs, gave him answer.
“Have ye time to finish it?” he asked her, keeping his voice matter-of-fact.
“Oh, please,” Cecily begged. When Seona nodded, she lifted her baby into her arms. “Was his head turned so?”
“Near enough,” Seona said, a richer color blooming in her cheeks.
Despite her obvious discomfort having an audience near, Ian lingered to watch. At first Seona’s strokes were tentative, but gradually the lines of her body eased and her hand responded with surer movements. A breeze rustled the dogwood boughs. Something less tangible stirred below, invisible threads spinning out between Seona and the bairn.
“Ian,” John said, voice too soft to break the spell. “There’s a book I meant to show you. I’ll fetch it from the cabin.”
Ian nodded, only half-hearing. Seona’s cap lay crumpled behind her on the blanket. Her hair was gathered to the side in a hasty knot, the ends spiraling loose over her shoulder. The tips of the curls glinted that surprising bronze in the patch of sunlight that fell across the neck of her bodice, very like Catriona’s, if darker. A furrow deepened between her brows as she worked, eyes flicking from the bairn to the emerging portrait. As he watched, she caught her lower lip between her teeth. The expression was so reminiscent of his sister at work at her easel that only reluctance to disturb her suppressed a chuckle.
The breeze scattered coins of sunlight over the coverlet. A strand of hair swept across Seona’s cheek. Rather than pause to finger it behind an ear, she nudged it away with a toss of her chin, again as he’d seen Catriona do a hundred times.
He stared at that chin, dipping and tilting as she worked—a chin that bore a slight but definite cleft. A mirror of his sister’s chin. Of his father’s. And his own.
He forgot for a moment to breathe.
Blood will tell, he’d heard it said. So, it seemed, would bone.
Or was he imagining things? His thumb found the familiar indentation in his chin, traced the telling contour beneath the flesh. For the first time he wondered whether, beneath his beard, his uncle bore this feature that marked Ian and his siblings with the stamp of their Cameron blood.
He was stabbed by an image of Lily, remote in her dignity and grace. But reserve alone was no barrier to a white man’s lust—and surely Seona’s father had been white. What white man had been closer to Lily her lifelong than his uncle?
Born right here at Mountain Laurel, Rosalyn had said of Seona. Before Mama married Papa Hugh . . . But mightn’t it have been anyone, all those years ago? A visitor. A neighbor. A predatory sort, someone of Gideon Pryce’s ilk.
In a rush of denial Ian closed his eyes, in darkness dissecting Seona’s face, feature by feature. The creek-water eyes set deep beneath arched lids, the wide cheekbones with their prominent cast . . . those weren’t his blood. As for the rest—a trick of the shadows. When he opened his eyes again, he’d see his uncle’s slave. Lily’s daughter. Nothing else.
But that wasn’t all he saw.
“Ian! I have it here. Come into the sunlight, will you?”
At John’s hail he turned—and cracked his forehead on the dogwood’s low bough. Leaves shaken loose from the jostled branch drifted across the coverlet. One landed on the hand now hovering over the portrait.
“Mister Ian, you all right?” Seona asked.
“Aye—fine.” Forehead smarting, half-blinded by revelation, he ducked the limb and crossed the yard. He took the book John held out, a weight of pasteboard and cracked calfskin.
“Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty’s Dominions,” John said, reading the title aloud. “Penned by a Fellow of the Royal Society. I had it from my father when he passed.”
Having taken in but one word in three, Ian said, “Ye want to plant trees?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you. But not pine for naval stores as they do down on the Cape Fear. Hardwoods for cabinetmakers and carpenters, craftsmen like yourself.” John took the volume from Ian’s unresisting hands and rifled the musty pages, pausing to expound on certain texts.
Cousin . . . cousin. It was the only word Ian could hear. It sounded a drumbeat in his head. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Seona spoke behind him.
“I best be getting back, Mister Ian. There’s a heap of wash waiting. You staying on?” She was holding a chicken. The cap was back on her head.
“No,” he said. “I’ll go with ye.”
The brush of her petticoat against the ferns, the snap of a twig beneath her foot, the occasional cruck of the chicken she carried, rose like gunshots above the surrounding forest sounds, so heightened was Ian’s awareness of Seona behind him on the path. At the point where the stream’s course bent—to follow it would lead upslope to the birch hollow—he halted and turned.
Seona walked into his chest. His arms went out to steady her, and briefly he pressed his cheek against her cap, feeling through the linen the warmth of her, the firmness of bone. That telling bone.
She struggled against him. “Mister Ian—turn me loose!”
He released her, to find it wasn’t him she fought but the half-smothered chicken. The flapping bird found its way into his grasp and he wrestled it into submission against his side.
“Are ye hurt?”
She brushed a bit of feather-down from the tip of her nose. “Miss Cecily’s chickens ain’t of a mind to peck. Not like those laying hens we keep. They’re downright wicked, those birds. I could show you the scars.”
Show me, he wanted to say. Her gaze passed over his face, settling on his brow, as if she’d read the thought. What did she see? Did she know? Had she known all along?
“You’re gonna have a bruise, Mister Ian.”
“Bruise?” He touched his brow, felt the tender swelling there. “That limb . . . aye.” He didn’t care about his face. He wanted to take her hand and climb to the hollow. Climb as high as they could and look out over his uncle’s land and breathe the air. Maybe then his thoughts would come clear.
She hadn’t the time. The wash awaited.
“Do they know not to speak of it?”
He’d changed course without warning again, but this time she followed him nimbly. “Miss Cecily promised not to tell. I know she won’t.”
“She’ll warn John?”
Seona nodded.
“Did ye tell Cecily about the hollow?”
“No, sir. That secret’s still my own.”
“Ours.” He wanted to touch her, but the memory of her cornered by Gideon Pryce came vividly to mind, inhibiting the impulse. The chicken gave a squawk. He eased his grip on the bird and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “The bairn—did he really smile?”
That made her smile. “No, but he did get the sweetest look just then. I think he’s happy to be in the world.”
“Who wouldn’t be, landing in the laps of those two?”
One child’s mother a freewoman. Less than a mile away, another child’s mother a slave. Fate dealt out like cards. Winning hand, losing hand. Happiness a happenst
ance of birth.
“Let me take that bird, Mister Ian. It ain’t fitting, you toting it home.”
What wasn’t fitting was the life she’d been forced to lead.
“I’d like ye to come to the shop,” he said as he handed over the chicken. “I know ye’ve the wash waiting now, but whenever ye’ve the time, even after we finish the desk, ye could come, keep drawing in my book. Would ye like that?”
Her pleased expression made him glad he’d followed his impulse. “I would. If we’re careful.”
“Aye,” he said. “We will be.” But he was thinking that if he handled things right, they might not need to be.
11
He’d never heard it said his kin possessed the second sight, yet Ian swore his uncle had sensed the confrontation coming. Shortly before he returned from the Reynolds’, determined to present Hugh Cameron with his revelation of Seona’s parentage and challenge her enslavement, Ian’s uncle shut himself up in his room. And would admit no entry—at least from him.
“It is no cause for fretting,” his aunt said briskly when Uncle Hugh failed to appear at supper. “Your uncle has overspent himself since your arrival. He needs rest.”
“Fixing to have hisself another ailing spell,” Maisy muttered, emerging from his uncle’s room next morning with an untouched breakfast tray. “He done had a dose of his medicine, Mister Ian. Won’t do no good to trouble him.”
“Medicine? What sort?”
“That black draft,” Maisy said, screwing up a sour face.
Laudanum.
Forced to bide his time, Ian rode to the fields, lending his labor where needed, approving or amending whatever decisions Dawes had made in his uncle’s absence. In every other available moment that day and the next he worked on his sister’s desk. And simmered.
“Mister Ian?”
He’d hoped a fervent application of beeswax to the finished desk would distract him from his bottled frustration. All it had accomplished was working up a sweat. Now he turned to Seona, seated on the low stool, pattern book open on her lap, taking advantage of a few stolen moments to draw, as he’d invited her to do.
