Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  Quickly he made his way to the taproom. He’d met the rail-thin tap-keeper, called Sprouse, over drinks with Stoddard. The man watched Ian make his way past a straggle of men gathered round a game of draughts.

  “Your uncle find the room to his liking?” the man inquired.

  Ian nodded. “He will when he wakes long enough to take note. Meantime, might ye know a place to purchase a quire of paper? And, er . . .” What did one call them? “Women’s fancies?”

  “Ribbons and the like?” The barman eyed Ian from beneath beetling brows as he nodded, face warming. “And paper? They intended for the same lady?”

  “Aye. The lady’s an artist.”

  Sprouse named a merchant likely to carry the paper, another for the fancies. His glance strayed toward the door. “Would the artist be your young lady?”

  “In a manner of speaking. She’s my—”

  “Cousin?”

  He turned to find Rosalyn in the taproom doorway, dressed in an embroidered velvet jacket that fit her figure snugly over a tight-waisted gown. The knot of men at the gaming board unraveled, craning for a view. A low whistle from the group propelled Ian across the room. He took Rosalyn by the arm and marched her out the front door.

  Once outside, she pulled from his grasp. “Was that necessary? We did agree to do our shopping together.”

  She had him there.

  “We did,” he allowed with what spirit he could muster. While he could explain away the paper he intended to purchase for Seona, how was he to make his other purchase without arousing Rosalyn’s curiosity?

  Perhaps a timely distraction would present itself. He offered her his arm. “Shall we, then?”

  Her smile rivaled the westering sun as she slid her arm through his. “Lead on, Cousin. I shall tamely follow.”

  Aside from a table, two chairs, and a clothespress, a single narrow bedstead furnished the room at the Warm Springs Inn Ian shared with his uncle. When he retired for their last night, Uncle Hugh was asleep in it, worn from the past several days spent soaking in the mineral springs tucked into their mountain retreat, or in conversation in the inn’s taproom with the proprietor, Neilson, a fellow Scotsman. And his wife and numerous children. And other guests taking the waters. And the locals who came and went at all hours.

  Ian had never considered himself a loner—his childhood companions had been Thomas, Ned, and the lads he’d attended school with; after that, his fellow apprentices and the master joiner, Pringle; after that, he’d had Uncle Callum and those of his settlement, Chippewa, French, and Scots—but while he thought the springs were aiding his uncle’s recovery, the noisy bustle of the place was wearing on his nerves. He longed for solitude. And silence. But his bone-deep weariness this night had more particularly to do with Rosalyn and her unrelenting attentions.

  They hadn’t ceased after Salisbury, where he’d barely managed to make the clandestine purchase he’d intended without rousing her suspicion. Since reaching the inn, whenever Lily was occupied with his uncle, it had fallen to Ian to keep Rosalyn from languishing with boredom and discontent. Understandable, perhaps; their accommodations had proved more rustic than his aunt had glowingly predicted. Rosalyn had lamented the plainness of the food provided, despite its abundance, but table fare wasn’t the only aspect of the inn on the banks of the French Broad River to have occasioned her disappointment. The rooms were tiny and minimally apportioned. The maids were slatternly. And not a soul in the vicinity matched her notion of fitting society. Only Ian’s constant attention would do—as companion or guardian, he was never quite sure. Perhaps the lass was afraid, though she’d denied it the one time he’d asked.

  Suspecting she was doing her utmost to comport herself as charmingly as possible in a situation she very much regretted having entered, he’d schooled himself to rigid patience and hadn’t reminded her—more than once—that it had been at her own insistence she was there at all. Most men, to judge by the envious looks he’d received from guests and backwoods locals alike, would have relished his lovely cousin’s attentions, but Rosalyn had exhausted him with seemingly endless conversation during strolls along the river or by the hour in the taproom or at the springs while they waited and waited for the steaming, stinking water to work its restorative magic on his uncle.

  Today had been the worst. Despite three river walks over the course of the day, Rosalyn had clung to him like a chatty leech through supper and beyond. He’d finally shed her moments ago, in the passage between their rooms. Now all he wanted was sleep. In the morning, to his relief, they would be starting for Mountain Laurel.

  The room was more than sufficiently warmed by the fire in the hearth, but he dared not open the window to the chill mountain night. Undressed to his shirt, he stretched out on a quilt beside his uncle’s cot. In the grate a log shifted. Sparks spurted and died, wafting ash toward his face. He blinked in drowsy reaction, vision blurring.

  He might be more than fatigued. He felt unwell.

  Seona’s face swam in his mind, for the hundredth time since leaving her. From the moment they crested a slope west of Salisbury to see the mountains rising before them, wave upon blue wave, he’d wished her there in Rosalyn’s place. She’d have wanted to draw them . . .

  Putting out a hand from the quilt, he fumbled for his knapsack beneath the cot and the small, wrapped parcel within. Before he could draw back his hand, the irresistible tide of sleep had pulled him under.

  He dreamt of a woman in his arms, at first no more than the taste of lips, the brush of tumbled hair. Then he knew her—Seona. He pulled her to him, groaning . . . and woke thinking for a bewildering instant he was back in his room at Mountain Laurel and the touch was real. The woman real. The weight of her in his arms real.

  “Ian . . .”

  That was real. He sat up, limbs tangled in a woman’s shift, a woman’s clinging hair. Not raven, but golden. He reached for a stick of firewood and flung it onto the hearth, raising a swirl of sparks, then took his cousin by the shoulders.

  “What . . . ?” His tongue felt thick, his brain thicker. “What the devil are ye playing at?”

  Shock had reduced his voice to a slurred hiss. Rosalyn made no effort to lower hers. “Playing? I don’t—you’re hurting me!”

  Fire caught the stick he’d thrown on the grate, casting her in amber. A flash of unblushing truth darkened her eyes and he recoiled, the old shame rolling over him like a foul oil. Memories surfaced, of his cousin seeking comfort in the night once before. Of her persistent need of him on this trip. Now . . . this?

  “Is this why ye begged to come along? Ye meant to seduce me?”

  “No. It’s only, Lily said we’re leaving for home in the morning and . . .” Rosalyn glanced down, for an instant appearing vulnerable, almost ashamed. Then something hard took hold of her face. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  He blinked at her, disbelieving his ears. “I’d say it’s the least ye owe me.”

  “What about what you owe me?”

  His spinning head could make no sense of that. “What d’ye mean?”

  “For days now you’ve made me think you would welcome this—paying me such attentions.”

  Either she was out of her mind, or he was. “Rosalyn, I was being polite.”

  She winced at that. “You were toying with me. You knew what I hoped. I’ve waited and waited for you to propose. Given you every opportunity. But you haven’t!”

  He winced as well, but only at the level of her voice, which was growing shrill. He hadn’t had a clue what she’d intended. Marriage? Was that why she campaigned so hard to join them on this sojourn?

  “I’ve been running from ye every waking moment since we started this journey,” he said. “Or wishing I could. How could ye think I’d ever propose to marry ye?”

  “How dare—”

  He clapped a hand across her mouth. She struggled but he held her still, listening. How was it possible his uncle hadn’t stirred, all the noise they were making?


  “Keep your voice down or—”

  She bit him. With a muffled growl he thrust her away. She caught herself with a hand, then waved the other carelessly at the bed. “Papa Hugh won’t wake. I gave him an extra dose of laudanum. A deal more than I gave you.”

  Ian stared, the words burrowing into his brain like worms. Lily was the one who dosed his uncle. Did Rosalyn mean she’d given him twice the laudanum he needed?

  A deal more than I gave you. She’d dosed him. When?

  With effort he summoned memory of the last few hours. After supper she’d asked him to fetch her shawl, left behind in the dining room—just after he’d settled with a last whisky, which he’d left her minding in the parlor. Had that been her plan? Charm him into a marriage proposal. If charm didn’t work, seduce him. And if that didn’t work . . . compromise him into it, apparently.

  “Get out,” he tried to say. What issued was more snarl than speech.

  In a blur of white she was on her feet. Before she reached the door, it opened inward. Lily entered with a lighted candle. With a furious sob Rosalyn shoved past her. By then Ian was at his uncle’s side.

  “Uncle? Wake up!” He shook the still form in the bed. His efforts drew a groan; then his uncle’s mouth fell slack.

  Lily’s voice penetrated the panicked beat of his blood. “Mister Ian, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “She dosed him a second time . . . and me. Laudanum.” Dizziness swayed him, an effect of the black draft—which he ought to have recognized sooner, as much of the hateful stuff as his mam had made him swallow back in spring. “She didn’t give me enough to matter. But him—will he be all right?”

  Lily brought the candle nearer his uncle’s face, fingers to his wrist, ear poised above his parted lips. His uncle’s eyes rolled behind purple lids. “If she gave him again what I gave—just some to help him sleep. She’s seen me give it enough times to know.”

  Ian made a disgusted noise. “He’ll dream.”

  “He does.” Lily glanced up, studying him not as a slave, but a healer. “I’ll watch, Mister Ian, if ye need to sleep this off.”

  The opiate coursing through his blood dragged at him like a tide. He fought it. “I’m all right. I’ll stay by him. Go back to my cousin. Make her tell ye how much she gave him—to the drop.” He didn’t trust himself to do that deed without wringing her pretty neck. “If it proves more than ye thought, come back to me.”

  He wanted to believe he’d dreamt the episode. That Rosalyn, for all the conniving her beauty apparently concealed, wouldn’t risk her reputation and prospects—not to mention his uncle’s well-being—to drug him, seduce him, and . . . what? Had she expected his uncle to wake come morning, find them together, and promptly insist on a publishing of banns?

  Fool lass, to think a little opiate was enough to have her way with him. That would take greater finesse than she possessed, the patience of a seduction spanning years, a web spun so gently he was bound long before he even noticed the strands.

  Sickened, Ian sat beside the bed and bowed his head into his hands, shutting out the spill of firelight over his uncle’s form. The chair edge bit into his thighs. He pressed harder, wanting pain. Wanting penance. He deserved every bit of insult Rosalyn had dealt him. Was it even the lass he should be blaming, or had his aunt been the instigator? Lucinda had been keen for Rosalyn to accompany them on the journey. But why would they have conceived the thing at all? Better to have approached the matter in the cold light of day. He’d have received that with far more grace. Refused it in the end but . . . Or did they know that?

  A sobering chill shot through his veins as he recalled that first morning at Mountain Laurel, words overheard outside the kitchen—about him and his uncle’s stepdaughters. Think he’ll marry one of ’em? Esther had asked, and Naomi had said, If Miss Lucinda have her way, he will. . . . He’d dismissed it then as backyard gossip. But even if it was true, his aunt and cousin wouldn’t have gone to these lengths to see such a marriage secured unless they had reason to suspect another had stolen his heart . . .

  His uncle’s body jerked beneath the quilts. With no more warning Hugh Cameron sat bolt upright, tumbling the quilts, and cried out with a violence that raised the hair across Ian’s scalp. “Aidan!”

  18

  “Aidan . . . lad. They told me ye were dead.” His uncle’s flesh was iron, unbending, his eyes wide and fixed on Ian with a longing not meant for him, a recognition misplaced.

  “No, Uncle. It’s . . .” He’d started to object but on impulse changed his mind, giving in to his uncle’s delusion. “Aye . . . Da. I’m here now. Please, will ye rest easy?”

  There was a knock, a muffled query. The door opened and the proprietor, Neilson, banyan hastily wrapped, thrust a Betty lamp into the room. “Mr. Cameron?” he said, accent thickened with the grogginess of one yanked rudely from sleep. “What’s agley then? The hollerin’ had us leapin’ oot o’ our beds.”

  Ian started to pull away, but his uncle gripped his wrist. “Stay, Aidan. Dinna go so quick.”

  Aware of Lily crowding into the doorway behind the proprietor, Ian said, “I’m sorry, sir. My uncle’s dream-fuddled, is all.”

  “’Twill be the black draft,” Neilson said, accepting the explanation in stride. “And here’s your lass come tae gi’ ye a hand.” He made way for Lily. “Need ye aught from me and mine then?”

  “No, sir. Again, I’m sorry to disturb ye.”

  “Och, lad,” came Neilson’s weary reply. “’Twould nay be the first time a wee stramash has come ower in these rooms, and nay the last. Guid night tae ye—morning, rather, for I think it all but is.”

  Lily shut the door on his departing back and turned, shift flowing pale round her shins. Candlelight glossed her high cheekbones and coppery skin.

  His uncle’s features lit at sight of her. “Look ye, Lily. ’Tis Aidan—come back to us.” He stretched a hand from the bed, the other still clutching Ian. “Come here to me, lass. I’ve a thing needs saying to the both of ye.”

  Lily stepped back, stumbled, and nearly dropped the candle, crying out as hot wax spattered her hand. “It’s too late for this, Master Hugh. Too late!”

  She wrenched open the door and fled.

  His uncle’s head fell back on the pillow, face a mirror of Ian’s bewilderment, a vague disquiet in his eyes. Until they slid back to Ian and warmed. “D’ye mind the wee deer, Aidan? The one ye made a pet?”

  Seona had told him of a deer . . . “She used to feed from our hands,” he said, snatching at the scrap of memory.

  “Only from yours, lad. ’Twas ye had that touch with the creature.” Uncle Hugh’s grip tightened as a spasm of pain, of mind or body Ian couldn’t tell, bowed his mouth. “I could wish ye’d come back to me sooner. I did a terrible thing . . . thinking ye dead.”

  Ian shook his head. “What . . . what did ye do?”

  “’Tis no’ your fault, see? I dinna blame ye. But what I did . . . ’tis unspeakable.”

  Did his uncle mean his second marriage, perhaps made in hope of producing another son? But his uncle’s union with Lucinda couldn’t be called unspeakable. Unless deep down he saw it as a betrayal of Lily and Seona.

  The man’s stricken eyes searched his. “Dinna stare so at me, lad. I kent ’twas wrong to do it, that ye’d despise me for it. Ye were always after me to free them.”

  Them. Whatever this was tormenting his uncle, it couldn’t have to do with Seona. Aidan Cameron had died before she was born. “Who, Unc—Da? Is it to do with Lily?”

  Uncle Hugh grimaced. Then, almost dreamily, his mouth relaxed.

  “Ye mind how your mother found the wee raven chick, and ye took it to tend? What did ye call it? ’Twas after that bit of old verse . . .”

  His uncle’s mind had veered away from Lily. Or flinched away. His eyelids drooped, concealing the sinking flame behind them. The grip on Ian’s wrist relaxed. Half-lost in the dream now himself, he pulled his hand away and turned to the window, where the first rose of dawn o
utlined the mountains.

  “I mind it,” he said. “He called it Munin.” Memory.

  The clang and bump of the awakening inn went on beyond the door, but they were left undisturbed in their room. Ian sat by his uncle’s bed. Lily—come back to them dressed and composed not a quarter hour later—occupied a chair at its foot, her braid glinting blue-black in the dawn light chinking through the curtains, a shawl draping her shoulders. She hadn’t mentioned Rosalyn. Ian hadn’t inquired. There were questions more pressing.

  “What happened to my cousin, Aidan? How did he die?”

  Lily’s head had drooped, but when he spoke, she jerked it up, awareness in her red-rimmed eyes. She hadn’t been asleep.

  “Tell me what my uncle did because of him—the thing that haunts him, that makes him look at me and see the son he lost.”

  Lily drew breath and let it out in a silent heave. “No one kens the whole of it, Mister Ian. Or if so, she’s gone now beyond the telling.”

  “Who’s gone?” His uncle’s first wife, he thought, but that wasn’t who Lily meant.

  “Ye maybe won’t mind Ruby,” she said. “But ye do her boys.”

  In the kitchen that first morning, that awkward ending to the conversation when he’d asked about Sammy and Eli. “Naomi mentioned Ruby when I asked after those two. The brothers, one with the scar on his brow like a hook.”

  “Sammy, the older one.” In the hearth a log shifted, spilling ash from the grate. Lily didn’t seem to notice. “Their daddy, Esau, was one of Master Hugh’s field hands. Ruby was a pretty gal, her boys wee things I tended back then, while she worked. One day we heard a shot away off in the fields. Thought it was a hunter—maybe even Aidan. He’d gone out with his musket. Then Mister Dawes came in, Esau trussed in the back of a cart, Ruby stumbling behind weeping—” Her voice caught. “And Aidan, shot by his own musket, laid out dead. Esau’s doing, Mister Dawes said.”

  Ian glanced at his uncle, fathoms deep and undisturbed by their voices, features still as a figure on a tomb. The bones beneath his grayish skin seemed nearer the surface than they had, as though in the night the flesh between had melted away. He was far less certain than he’d been upon lying down to sleep that this trip had been of any lasting benefit.