Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

“Pass it along if you can’t decide!”

  “There’s some here won’t dither!”

  It sounded a good course. He thrust the ear at Spencer, who raised his hands to ward him off. “I’m a bachelor confirmed. Ain’t about to go messing with that.”

  Ian turned in desperation to John, to find his neighbor enjoying his discomfort. “Sorry, my friend. I don’t need a red ear to get a kiss.” So saying, he swept Cecily into his arms.

  “Take care,” Zeb Allen warned, “or there’ll be another mouth to feed next harvest.”

  Spencer slapped his knee. “Reckon you should know, Zeb.”

  Rebecca Allen rolled her eyes at her husband’s waggled brows.

  Laughter died, leaving everyone staring. Heat washed to the roots of Ian’s hair. The rush of blood brought inspiration. Ruthie Allen stood by the bucket, elfin face splashed orange with firelight. Sweeping off his hat, Ian dropped a knee to the ground. “Would ye honor me with a kiss, Miss Ruthie, in exchange for this bonny red ear?”

  Ruthie sidled up to him, took the speckled ear, and presented her cheek for the kiss. And got it, with all the relief-born gallantry Ian could muster. The child put a hand to her face, then crooked a finger. He leaned close to hear her whisper, “Your face scratches like Papa’s.”

  Ian gave her blonde braid a tug.

  “If you’re of a mind to court my Ruthie, Mr. Cameron,” Zeb Allen called out, “come round to my cabin and announce your suit . . . in another ten years’ time!”

  Whoops of laughter accompanied Ruthie’s giggles as she skipped away with her prize. Ian clapped his hat on his head and grinned at her father. “I may, sir—if Spencer doesn’t mend his ways and beat me to your door.”

  John raised a warning hand. “Take care, Ian. Don’t scare Charlie into lighting for home before the rest of this corn makes it into the crib.”

  Ian joined in the laughter, grateful the attention had shifted. Sensing they were unobserved, he risked a look at Seona. Before their eyes could meet, she averted her face, from which a dusky tide was ebbing.

  Mister Charlie had saved back a jug of his apple brandy. The men sat at table, laughing over tales of a hound Mister Charlie once had that would tree a coon, then climb the tree after it. “’Twas over in the Tennessee—afore I’d had me enough of frontier living and come back across those high blue mountains.”

  Talk turned to Mister Charlie’s years spent fur-trapping overmountain, during the time the western part of North Carolina tried to break free and call itself the State of Franklin.

  Their voices washed over Seona as she sat with the hearth warming her back, Miss Cecily beside her rocking the baby’s cradle with her foot. Seona reckoned everyone but Lily thought she’d gone back with them through the wood, toting the corn that was their pay for the night’s work. She was weary enough she ought to have gone, snatched what sleep was left to be had. But such days as this came rare. There’d been a frolic in the barn after the feasting. Zeb Allen had plied his fiddle. She must have danced a turn with every man there. Save the one who found the red ear, who glanced at her now with those jay-wing eyes, making her wish this night might never end.

  Then Mister Charlie said a thing that perked her ears. “Reynold tells me you spent some years trappin’ too, up north among the Chippewa.”

  “Five years, aye.” Mister Ian turned back to his brandy. “I’ve an uncle who’s a fur trader. He came to Boston to visit my mam, took me back west with him. I was nigh eighteen, green as summer apples, and Uncle Callum not inclined to coddle me.”

  The air of the cabin rippled as the men settled in for a new tale. Mister Charlie lit a pipe. Soon the rafters filled with smoke. All Seona’s being was fixed on Mister Ian as he spoke of his first weeks in the northern wilds, living in a mixed settlement of Indians, Frenchmen, and a few other Scots who spent their winters trapping furs.

  Mister Ian had a pleasing voice, pitched deeper than one would expect. He’d taken off his coat and draped it over his chair. Watching the play of his muscles when he leaned forward and the shirt tightened across his shoulders, she tried to picture his life before coming to Mountain Laurel, tried to peer through the cracks between his words as he told of a sugar camp, where the Chippewa people moved in early springtime to tap the maple trees for sap to boil into sweetening.

  John Reynold poured himself some cider. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned why you returned to Boston.”

  “Get your heart broke by a red lassie?” asked Mister Charlie, always ready to poke fun at anything hinting of romance.

  Mister Ian tilted his head, firelight washing gold over his hair. “No, Charlie. It was a red laddie that did for me.”

  Mister Charlie choked on a draw of his pipe. “I’m jiggered,” he said between fits of coughing. “Broke your heart, did he?”

  Mister Ian laughed. “Never got near my heart. But he took a slice out of my leg.” His fingers passed over the stitched-up rent in his leather breeches, which Seona had seen before and wondered about. “That’s a tale for another time, though.”

  Mister Ian looked ready to put his head on the table and sleep where he sat. If this was their own cabin, Seona thought, she’d get up and go to him, untie his hair and spread it out between her fingers to see it loose in the firelight, brown as barley underneath, paling to a dozen shades of wheaten gold, bleached almost flaxen at the tips . . .

  Mister Ian chose that moment to turn her way. “Seona, it’s late . . . or is it early?”

  “Early, by my reckoning,” Mister John said, stifling a yawn.

  The chair scraped back as Mister Ian stood, a little unsteady. “Late or early, it’s time we left ye good people to your rest.” He crossed to her and held out a hand.

  As if from far away, Seona saw her fingers curl around his, and when he lifted her to stand, it felt like she was floating free, held to earth by his touch alone.

  Ian took a pine-knot torch to light their way. Despite blistered hands and aching back, he was in good spirits—and full of them. The harvest moon shone bright, filtering cold through the trees. When they reached the stream that ran alongside the path, he picked his way to it and tossed the unneeded torch into the flow.

  Seona came toward him in the moonlight, eyes dark pools. He’d lost track of the times he’d caught himself looking toward the hearth, where firelight glossed her skin and struck sparks in her thicket of hair. It had come loose from its braid, a warmer mantle than the arisaid knotted at her breast. He made her a leg, doffing his hat and bowing deep.

  Seona stopped on the path. “What do you call yourself doing, Mister Ian?”

  “What I’d have done while Zeb fiddled—were I less a coward. May I have the honor of this dance?”

  “I don’t hear no music.”

  He tilted his head, pretending to listen. “Don’t ye?”

  She laughed, and it was a lovely sound.

  “I like it when ye do that. Ye’ve a laugh like the creek’s singing. It suits your eyes.”

  “My eyes?”

  “Like water over rocks, all mossy green and brown. Creek-water eyes . . . creek-water laugh.”

  She surveyed him with hands on hips. “I’m thinking you had a mite too much of Mister Charlie’s apple brandy.”

  “Maybe so,” he admitted.

  “May bees don’t fly in autumn, Mister Ian. You’re drunk.”

  His gaiety sputtered and died, doused as surely as the torch. “Don’t call me that.”

  Her face lifted to him. “Don’t call you drunk?”

  “Don’t call me Mister Ian.”

  “What else am I to call you?”

  “Just . . . Ian.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  He took a step closer, heart beating fast. “Not in front of anyone else . . . but it’s only us here. Say my name. Just the once.”

  “Now?”

  “Aye, now.” His hand found her arm. He pulled her close enough to feel her breath brush his throat when she spoke.

 
“Ian—”

  He kissed her while his name still hung between them. The night had chilled her lips, but they warmed under his, tasting of cider.

  A jolt of desire made him step back, aware suddenly of what he was doing. The forest tilted under his feet like a pitching ship. He swayed, then steadied himself.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  She sounded stunned. Angry? He didn’t think so. But he’d managed to rattle himself.

  “Because . . .” Because he was drunk and making a fool of himself. Because he’d wanted to kiss her since their collision in the upstairs passage but had firmly squelched such thoughts—or thought he had—knowing he’d no business wanting to kiss one of his uncle’s slaves.

  Only now he knew she was more than that. He’d tried to get the truth from his uncle, but did Seona know the truth?

  “Because surely ye know whose daughter ye are?” he blurted, which had nothing to do with what she’d asked but accomplished what he’d hoped it would. Distracted them from that kiss.

  Her face in the moonlight appeared carved of stone. “Lily’s daughter.”

  “I mean your father.”

  “Slaves that look like me don’t ask after their daddies.” True or not, they were words meant to thrust him away. He wasn’t budging.

  “Lily’s never told ye?”

  “No.”

  That surprised him. “Did ye never wonder?”

  She didn’t answer that and he felt ten times an idiot. Who in her place wouldn’t wonder?

  “Did Master Hugh tell you something about me?” She asked it with more wariness than curiosity, but she’d asked.

  “He didn’t deny it.”

  “That ain’t the same as claiming me.”

  “Ye’re right. It isn’t.” She was shaking when he touched her again, lifting her chin. “So I’m claiming ye.”

  She jerked her head back. “You meaning to ask Master Hugh to sell me to you?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I meant only to call ye what ye are to me—my kin. I could no more own ye than I could my sister.” He didn’t know what he’d expected from her—certainly not the recoil of panic in her voice.

  “Don’t be talking to me like this, Mister Ian.”

  “Ian. Seona, I know ye’re afraid—”

  “Afraid? Mister Ian, you scare the ever-living sense out of me.”

  That jarred him. “Then why have ye come to the shop and drawn for me? I thought . . .” What had he thought? That they were friends? That she trusted him?

  “I wanted to,” she said, then whispered, “For me. I still do. But half the time I don’t know how to be with you. I ain’t your sister.”

  “My cousin.”

  She shook her head hard, like a deer shedding flies. “No, sir. Your slave.”

  That, ye’ll never be, he thought to say, but a burst of liquid birdsong checked him. The moon was setting below the ridge, yet when he sought Seona’s face again, he could see her clearly. The graying of the dark shot panic through him.

  “We better get back.”

  Seona took his proffered hand despite an instant’s hesitation, and sobered with the need for haste, he led her through the waking forest at a run.

  15

  Seona barely made it to her bed before she heard Lily waking. She lay unmoving, the scratch of her blanket against her cheek, thoughts turning tumbles in her head. Mister Ian . . . Master Hugh . . . Mama.

  Back when her mama kept the house and garden both, Seona had worked at her side, but whenever her small hands weren’t needed, she’d go up to the garret, if it wasn’t too hot or too cold, and draw for a spell, until someone called her down to help again. Then they got their new mistress and everything changed. Seona was put in her proper place, which meant out of the house except to work or sleep. But now and then she’d sneak inside.

  She minded one time when she’d been dead tired of pulling garden weeds and wondered could she make an escape. Her mama had been a few rows over in the pole beans. No one else had been by to see her slip off . . .

  She made it through the garden pales, down the rose trellis path to the back door of the house. Tipping on bare toes like a cat, she crept inside, hoping to find Miss Judith up in her room, nose in a book. How that girl liked her books! Sometimes she’d read aloud and spin Seona’s head full of story pictures so vivid they begged her to take up the bits of charcoal and paper she’d hid under her pallet and set them down afore they faded.

  She tread the back stairs to the new wing of the house and scampered down the passage toward the old front rooms, stopping when she got to Miss Lucinda’s door. Peeking round the molding, she saw the mistress at her dressing table, dabbing a finger into a pot and smearing something over her brows, making them stand out dark. Seona had never heard tell of such doings. Her mama’s eyebrows were smooth and black as crows’ wings with no help from a pot.

  It struck her funny. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Her hand clamped tighter as Miss Rosalyn’s voice issued from the room: “It’s dull as porridge here, Mama. Can’t we go back to Virginia?”

  Miss Lucinda said, “Whining does not become a lady, Rosalyn. Your sister doesn’t complain of dullness.”

  Miss Rosalyn huffed. “Judith’s too boring to notice whether or not she’s bored.”

  Seona scooted past the doorway, glimpsing Miss Rosalyn sitting on her mama’s bed, gazing out the window, looking cross and forlorn. She made it safe to Miss Judith’s room—sure enough the girl was reading—and whispered what she’d just seen. Forgetting the book, they crept downstairs, made sure Maisy wasn’t by to catch them, and blacked each other’s eyebrows with soot from the parlor hearth. They never heard Miss Rosalyn, drawn by their giggles, until she was hollering for her mama to come see what they’d done.

  Next thing Seona knew, Miss Lucinda was sweeping in with those false-black brows drawn tight, taking in what they’d done to their faces. “Judith Anne Bell! I warned you to leave this girl be. Is she teaching you to mock me?”

  Miss Judith went white-faced, save for the patches above her eyes—like fuzzy black caterpillars perched on her forehead. Seona glanced up at Miss Lucinda, glowering down at her. Cold bloomed in her chest.

  “I’ll teach you not to scorn your betters. Rosalyn, fetch my strap.”

  All the while Seona was hauled out to the yard and her skirt yanked up to bare her bottom, Miss Judith begged her mama to please, please stop. But Miss Lucinda pinned Seona’s skinny wrists hard enough to make the bones grind and wouldn’t turn her loose. When the strap fell, she yelped and tried to tuck her knees, but her feet slid from under her in the rain-slick grass. She sprawled there, seeing nothing but her tangled hair, braced for another sting . . . that didn’t come.

  Seona twisted to look. Her mama had hold of Miss Lucinda’s arm, locked in silent battle over that strap. Miss Lucinda gave her mama a shove that sent her staggering. The strap found Seona again, but only once before her mama fell across her, knocking her flat. After that Miss Lucinda didn’t seem to care who got beat. The taste of grass was sour in Seona’s mouth, mingled with the salt of tears. Every jerk of her mama’s body shuddered through her. She heard herself whimpering, but nothing from her mama, just the thunder of a heartbeat against her back.

  Then hooves clattered on the drive. Master Hugh’s voice broke like thunder. “Lucinda!”

  A cry rose that wasn’t from her mama. Seona peeked through their tangled limbs. Master Hugh had hold of his wife, dragging her away to the house. Last thing Seona minded before a pair of brown arms gathered her up was the sight of that strap abandoned on the crushed grass, Miss Judith in a heap beside it, soot smeared down her face and pink mouth wailing, “I’m sorry,” over and over like nothing in the world could make her stop.

  Naomi got Seona and her mama up off the ground. As they passed round back of the house, they heard Master Hugh hollering that he didn’t care what Miss Lucinda’s first husband did with his slaves, she was never—ever—
to put strap to them again. There came a crash of glass breaking, but the sound didn’t drown out Miss Lucinda’s shattered cry: “What is she to you?”

  A door slammed. Silence fell over house and yard, bottomless and still. They all dropped into it and Seona thought they’d go on dropping forever, with nobody daring to break the fall.

  Seona dipped into the clay pot and rubbed the salve between her fingers, then took up Malcolm’s knobby hand and commenced kneading, gentle to start. As his swollen joints eased, she dug deeper, while he sipped the birch-leaf tea her mama had steeped. Breakfast was frying on the hearth, but the kitchen hadn’t lost its chill. Cooking would warm things up until they’d have the door propped. But not yet. Early morning, snug in the kitchen, was Seona’s favorite part of the day—even when she was so bruised-eyed tired she’d had to drag herself from the cabin to get there. Though the Reynolds’ shucking had been days ago, she hadn’t caught up on her sleep.

  Malcolm hunched over the table, eyes shut, the skin of his face all crinkles and sags. His shoulders hadn’t stooped so bad after last year’s harvest. He winced and opened his eyes. She’d hit a painful spot.

  “Sorry,” she said, reaching again for the pot, stifling a yawn.

  “There’s no helpin’ some hurt in the healing.”

  “Mama does a better job of it.”

  “Ye’ve her touch, a leannan.”

  Sweetheart. Malcolm didn’t talk Gaelic much these days. Seona liked it when he did. He was the last of Mountain Laurel’s slaves who could. Naomi was the only other slave who’d been there when the old master, Duncan Cameron, was still living, but he’d died when she was still a girl. She’d long since forgot whatever she’d known of that tongue.

  “You fixing to take Master Hugh his tea?”

  At Naomi’s question Seona noticed her mama wiping her hands on a cloth. “Best I get it to him,” Lily answered. “He’s turned restless, threatening to be up afore he ought.”

  “You add a little something to change his mind?”

  Lily smiled. “Just chamomile.”