Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

There came a soft rap on the kitchen door. Mister Ian stuck his head in, giving them all good morning. Outside a cloudy dawn was starting to gray. He spied Seona at the table. “I’m for an early start in the shop. Join me when ye’ve a moment?”

  Seona felt all eyes on her. Mister Ian wanted her to come draw. Or was that what he wanted everyone to think? It was no secret now, but other things were. Maybe he meant to talk more about Master Hugh and her mama. Or was it another kiss he had in mind?

  That night on the footpath had turned her world on its head. But a white man had asked something of her. Whatever else had changed, she knew what was expected. “Yes, sir. Can I finish here?”

  “Of course.” He gave a nod and pulled the door shut on the silence.

  The table was as scarred and worn as Malcolm’s hand. Seona didn’t lift her eyes from it. The fire crackled. Ham for the house table sizzled. No one spoke. Lily went into the herb room behind the loft ladder. Seona heard her leave through the back way, taking Master Hugh his tea.

  “Ye’re doin’ a fine job,” Malcolm said, picking up the thread of their talk, Seona thought, until he added, “Ye do fine work for Mister Ian, too.”

  Naomi clattered a pan. “Weren’t for Mister Ian, ’spect we’d still be wondering what you did on a Sunday whenever you run off to the woods. Picking berries for Miss Judith, huh?”

  When Seona said nothing to that, Naomi asked, “You have a nice visit with Miss Cecily, after the shucking?”

  Seona studied on working salve into the base of Malcolm’s thumb. “Mister Ian told Mama he’d see me home. I didn’t expect he’d stay so late.”

  “You and Mister Ian spending a heap of time together, seem like.”

  “Somebody’s got to take him dinner when he’s too busy—”

  “Child, you think no one here got eyes in their head?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you letting Mister Ian make a pet of you, and folks is noticing.” Naomi bent to turn the ham. “Mister Ian weren’t raised knowing how to be with our kind. He don’t know how to keep separate—but you do.”

  “Our kind,” Seona said, tasting the bitter in her voice.

  Malcolm’s big-jointed fingers closed over hers. “Heed Naomi, lass. And take heed to yourself. Mister Ian’s looked on ye kindly, but he may no’ always be here.”

  Gripped by mild alarm, she blurted, “Has he talked of leaving?”

  “No’ to me. But what Mister Ian sets himself to do and what the Lord has in mind might no’ be one and the same. But if he leaves, ye think Miss Lucinda will go on favorin’ ye as he’s done?”

  They all knew the answer to that. “Master Hugh knew about my drawing and let it go on.”

  “There’s no promise Master Hugh will long be here to shield ye, either.” Malcolm’s white brows puckered as he searched her face. “Is that how it is, then? Are ye hopin’ Mister Ian will come to care for ye so he’ll keep ye and your mama safe?”

  Seona pulled her hand away before Malcolm could feel it shaking. She’d no doubt what the mistress would do to her and Lily if Master Hugh were gone. She’d have her revenge—for whatever wrong she thought Lily had done her. And on me for being born?

  “You heard me tell him I’d go to the shop.”

  Naomi swung a kettle of porridge from the fire. “Do like you said. Just don’t be giving Miss Lucinda reason to cast eyes your way on account of Mister Ian. She got her plans for him, and sure as I’m bound for glory, they don’t include you.” She ladled the porridge and plunked down two bowls. “Now tuck in, you two, and let’s get this day commenced.”

  Despite the interruptions of the corn harvest and his uncle’s infirmity, Ian was confident of having Stoddard’s bespoke work—not ten desks, but more than two—done on schedule. Barring an inability to keep his mind on the work. Tracing the outline of tail joints to the matching pin board clamped to the bench was proving no match for the distraction of Seona, seated behind him with pattern book and lead. Chance hadn’t afforded opportunity to exchange a word with her since their own corn harvest; he’d tried to create the occasion, intruding upon her in the kitchen before the sun was up, all but ordering her to the shop.

  She’d been too long in coming. Thomas had preceded her and was at work on the cooperage side of the shop. It was maddening. The partition wall might shield Seona from sight, but it wouldn’t shield their conversation.

  Ian inscribed the last joint marking and reached for the saw. Behind him, the scratch of lead abruptly ceased. His hand wavered. Was she as impatient to speak as he? Or did she dread it?

  He’d forgotten which tool he’d reached for. Hang it all. He turned and went down on one knee beside her. “Let’s see what ye’ve done.”

  Seona turned the pattern book on her lap. Chary of wasting paper, she’d confined her work to a single page: practice sketches of scuppernong vines and three completed designs. Two were simple, like the one she’d drawn for Catriona’s desk. The third was more ambitious, a corner design that made elaborate use of the vine’s tendency to curl.

  “Bent on challenging my carving skills, I see. But what’s this?” He turned the book to the door’s light, better to see a small sketch in the page’s bottom corner. A pair of mice, bright-eyed and bewhiskered, one dressed in frilled gown and bonnet, the other in workaday clothes. Surprised and charmed, he said, “‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse’?”

  “You know that story?” Seona’s mouth lifted at the corners, bringing to mind what he’d tried to forget: that reckless moonlit kiss.

  A moment passed before he found his voice. “Aye. I read Aesop’s Fables as a lad.”

  “Miss Judith read them to me.”

  “Judith?” There was no concealing his astonishment. “Does she read to ye still?”

  “Miss Lucinda put a stop to that, long time back.” Seona rose and set the pattern book aside.

  The case for the fourth desk he meant for Edward Stoddard’s order sat atop the bench, dovetailed corners tight as any he’d ever produced. Seona ran a finger along the interlocking seam. “That night at the Reynolds’, you said what made you come back from the wilds was an Indian?”

  His heart gave a thump. He’d thought she’d been about to speak of . . . but she wouldn’t. Not with Thomas listening. “Said that, did I?”

  She pitched her voice low, capturing his faint Scots lilt. “‘It was a red laddie that did for me.’ That’s what you said.”

  Thomas’s laughter filled the shop. He’d moved to a jointer plane to finish the beveling work on a set of staves. “If it’s a story you want, that’s a good one. Don’t let him put you off.”

  Ian stood and shot a look at his alleged slave, who shrugged and went on with his work.

  “Aye, I’ll tell ye then,” he said, gladdened when Seona smiled. “It was late last winter it happened. The rice and the dried stuffs were near gone in the settlement and no fresh provisions to be had from Detroit for a month or more, so Uncle Callum and I went hunting. For meat. Not furs.” They’d traveled eastward but game was scarce. They’d crossed into hunting grounds disputed with the Seneca and fell to tracking a small herd of elk. But the Seneca had empty bellies, too. Five warriors from the east converged on them, claiming the same herd. There’d been heated words, a scuffle; a warrior armed with musket and bayonet had slashed open Ian’s thigh. “More by accident than design, I think now. I overreacted—wrenched the weapon from him and clubbed him with it. Then I was hit from behind.”

  Next thing he’d known, the Seneca had cleared out and Callum was kneeling over him, cursing him roundly as he stanched the flow of blood into the snow.

  “He bound me up,” Ian continued. “But the wound was deep. He rigged a travois and pulled me with it, then had me into a canoe. After a day my wound festered. I thought he was taking me back to the settlement but was too muddled with fever for a time to know. We’d reached the Carrying Place between Wood Creek and the Mohawk River before I realized we were heading east through New York.”r />
  Twice during the hellish journey the gash to his leg had half-healed, only to break open again with a foul seepage. And fever. The third time, in Boston, was the worst.

  “But heal it did, in the end. As ye see.” He slapped a hand against his thigh, where his breeches hid the ugly scar.

  “He’s making light of it,” Thomas said. “The saw-blades wanted his leg off and would’ve had it, too, if not for his mama. She the one saved his leg, though for all his carrying on you’d think she’d half killed him doing it.”

  Seona’s brows pulled together. “You weren’t with Mister Ian in Boston, were you?”

  Ian bit back the caution that leapt to his lips.

  The silence was brief before Thomas answered, “Think I ain’t heard this tale before?” Then he gathered up staves, trusses, and windlass and went out to the yard.

  With so many distractions, Ian had done nothing toward seeing Thomas safely back north. Harvest was past, but there was still the tobacco in the curing barn, in need of hogsheads to bring it to market. Hogsheads Thomas was making now . . .

  It was becoming far too easy to let Thomas stay.

  “Why didn’t you go back west with your uncle, after your leg healed?” Seona’s question yanked Ian from his thoughts.

  “I wanted to,” he replied. “But it was weeks before I could sit a horse again. Besides . . . when I left Boston the first time, I wasn’t on the best of terms with my da.” A laughable understatement. “Callum wanted me to stay and settle what was between us. I expect he thought by time my leg healed, I’d have found a way.” He hadn’t, though by then he’d wanted to. “Uncle Hugh’s letter arrived when I was barely on my feet, and it was decided I should come here instead.”

  Seona returned her attention to the half-constructed desk. “I’m glad you didn’t lose your leg, Mister Ian, or die of that wound.”

  Ian’s mouth tugged sideways. She didn’t regret his existence. That was something, after his behavior on the path that night. He glanced through the open doors to see Thomas in the yard, fitting a ring of staves into a trussing hoop. Malcolm was lending a hand. Still he lowered his voice. “I asked ye to call me Ian.”

  She reached for the pattern book, as if needing something besides him on which to focus. “I know.”

  “Did ye think I wouldn’t remember?” He hadn’t been that drunk.

  Her grip on the book tightened. “How can you know about me when Master Hugh won’t say it’s so? Has he?”

  “No. But your face speaks to the truth of it.”

  She lifted a hand to her chin, then seeing him watching, snatched it away. But the gesture was telling. Ian was conscious of noises beyond the shop, senses stretched to catch any intrusion—a step on the gravel path, an approaching voice. Thomas’s mallet banged out a reassuring rhythm.

  “I aim to see ye freed. Like ye deserve.”

  Her brows drew tight. “Deserve? On account I look whiter than Mama? Or Thomas?”

  He’d said he couldn’t own her, but there was Thomas, making him seem the hypocrite. He wished he could explain. “Seona, the color of your skin isn’t at issue. Your blood is. As for Lily, ye think I like seeing those ye love in bondage?”

  What if he managed to wrest one slave’s freedom from his uncle—and the General Assembly? He might find a place for Seona in Boston. Maybe even Lily. But the lot of them? Neither he nor his parents had the means to shoulder a responsibility of that magnitude. Not that his uncle would countenance it. If he was to do anything about freeing slaves, apart from Seona, it would have to be over the long term. He’d have to stay at Mountain Laurel, live the life of a planter, bide his time . . .

  Maisy’s voice reached them from the yard, but he didn’t catch her words. Thomas ceased his racket and called a reply. “Come on through, Maisy. You’ll find her in the shop yonder.”

  Before either Ian or Seona could stir, Maisy was there, silhouetted against the sunlight, hands on hips. “I got beds to make, Seona, but I don’t see no linens drying on that line.”

  “Mister Ian?” A second voice, hesitant and deep, came from behind them. Filling the door to Ian’s side of the shop, Ally snatched his battered straw hat from his head and crumpled it in his hands. “They sitting round the curing barn waiting to be told what they meant to do.”

  “They who, Ally?”

  “Will, Pete, Munro. They’s sitting idle.”

  Ian pressed his fingers to his temples. “I expect they’re meant to be doing whatever Dawes told them to do.”

  “That’s just it.” Ally twisted his hat. “We ain’t seen Mister Dawes.”

  Behind him Maisy said, “Seona, the bedclothes ain’t gonna wash themselves.”

  Ian lowered his hand as Ally’s words sank in. “Ye’ve not seen Dawes today? At all?”

  Ally wagged his head. “No, sir. Didn’t want to bother Master Hugh, him feeling poorly, but what you reckon he’d want us doing?”

  Heaving a sigh, Ian turned to Seona, to find she’d already slipped away.

  16

  Ian opened the door of Dawes’s cabin and recoiled. Gulping a clean breath, he flung the door wide. Crumpled clothing, bits of rubbish, and a considerable quantity of fired jugs littered the table and a narrow bed frame, but Dawes wasn’t lying sprawled among the disorder. Ian picked his way to the hearth and squatted there: no hint of warmth from the grate met his outstretched hand.

  “Dawes does his job well enough sober,” his uncle had informed him, spending worrisome breath after taking to his bed in relaying such warnings and instruction. “But the man bears watching to keep him so.”

  Ian stood, resentment mounting. He hadn’t time for this. He’d desks to build. And heaven help him, slaves to sort. The latter proved a sullen group, lounging outside the tobacco barn, disinclined to be helpful when Ian asked what they were meant to be about.

  “Don’t know, Mister Ian.” It was Will put himself forward as spokesman, mouth curved with insolence thinly veiled. “Nobody tell us.”

  Ian reached for patience, wishing himself anywhere else. The role of slave driver fit him like an ill-made coat. How did a man grow to abide it? Perhaps he found the wherewithal at the bottom of a jug.

  “Right, then. The barn roof. There’s the corner letting in rain, aye?”

  No evidence of recent patching met his scrutiny. He set Pete to splitting shingles and, after an exchange with Ally, put him and Will to braking the flax harvest, stored in the weaving shed since the summer. Munro went to the orchard to glean the last of the apples. Ian set off for the house, in powerful need of someone on whom to vent his spleen. As chance had it, his aunt was crossing the front hall toward the stairs when he came through the back door.

  “Madam,” he called, striding down the passage, regarding neither his soiled boots nor the level of his voice. “Might I inquire after the whereabouts of your husband’s so-called overseer?”

  Lucinda halted, one hand on the banister. “Should I know of Mr. Dawes’s whereabouts?” Her expression had worked itself into affronted bafflement, yet her grip on the banister was white-knuckled. “The man isn’t accountable to me.”

  “Apparently Dawes holds himself accountable to naught but a whisky jug. Would it interest ye to learn the field hands sat idle half the morn for lack of supervision?”

  “If you’re telling me the hands are lazy, Mr. Cameron, that is no news to me. I daresay you’ll find they require far stiffer measures than your Yankee-born sensibilities would seem to allow.”

  “If anyone needs a whip to drive him, madam—” Ian broke off at the sound of his uncle’s door opening. It wasn’t Uncle Hugh who stepped into the passage, but Lily. Though she’d every right to visit his uncle’s room at present, the sight of her stirred the suspicion he’d lately entertained, suspicion mirrored in his aunt’s brittle glare; Uncle Hugh—surprisingly on his feet—had joined Lily in the passage, speaking in an undertone. Lily nodded and made for the back door.

  Lucinda raised her voice. “Hugh, should
you be out of bed?”

  Ian’s uncle drew himself up, face gray with strain. “I should be many things, Lucinda. For the present, since I’m no’ permitted peace, it would seem I’m to be arbitrator. Dinna question Ian on matters of running the farm. However stiff the measures he sees fit to mete out to our hands—or to Dawes—I trust he’s able to discern the matter, though the lad’s no more Yankee-born than I.”

  Lucinda absorbed the rebuke in frosty silence.

  A rustle and murmur close to hand drew Ian’s glance upward to see Judith and Rosalyn peeping over the banister, just as Maisy appeared in the parlor doorway.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am. I seen through the window that Mister Dawes is back. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Send him word to come to me,” Uncle Hugh said from down the passage.

  Lucinda and Ian both started to protest, but Maisy said, “I seen too . . . Mister Gideon Pryce and Miss Phyllida have ridden into the stable-yard.”

  Excited squeals erupted abovestairs; his cousins’ craning heads disappeared.

  Lucinda brightened. “Send to the kitchen for tea,” she ordered Maisy. “Tell Naomi to use the chinaware.”

  Ian made for the back door as well, pausing only to tell his uncle, “I’ll deal with Dawes, now he’s back.” And a sight more readily than he’d have done five minutes ago. If he’d little wish to reprove an inebriated overseer, he’d less to be corralled into the parlor with Gideon Pryce.

  Despite Ian’s hopes of evasion, he found Pryce loitering in the empty shop when he returned from dealing with Dawes.

  “Mr. Cameron, you’re a hard man to track down.”

  “I’m obliged to wear a number of hats these days.” Ian flung his own onto the bench by the door and reached for his discarded leather apron, ill-tempered after enduring the overseer’s vague excuse of sleeping off a drunk behind the tavern, miles away near the new county courthouse. “Which can I don for ye?”

  It was then Pryce let fall news of the decision made while Ian was off sorting Dawes. “I spoke to your uncle about the thermal springs in the mountains west of Morristown. As you’ll be traveling nearly half the distance to deliver your . . . trade,” he said with a nod at the current desk on the workbench, “I put it forward as an opportunity for your uncle to avail himself of the springs’ renowned benefits. Mrs. Cameron embraced the notion with enthusiasm.”