Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  Seona barely heard him above the water falling, splashing over pebbles, green and brown. Munin gave no answer as she stepped from the birches into sunlight. “You making friendly with that old bird?”

  Ian started, turning to stare like she was coming to him out of a dream. When she stopped before him, he said, “Your eyes . . . they really are all the colors of the water.”

  He’d spread an old quilt in a grassy space among the rocks. A knapsack, canteen, and his rifle lay to the side. He wore his good blue coat. His hair was bound in a proper tail, shining like wheat in the sun. Ashamed of her shabbiness, Seona looked at the ground. “Water’s clear. It don’t have color.”

  He crooked a finger under her chin to raise it. “But it does.”

  His hand was warm. She leaned her face against it and wondered could he hear the pounding of her heart. If her eyes were pools, then his were smoke in an autumn sky. She wanted to fly away into them and be swallowed up whole.

  “Ye got away all right?”

  Ian had left the farm in the milky-blue of dawn, saying he was bound for the Reynolds’. Seona had slipped away as soon after as she dared without a word to anyone, heading through the wood, where the mist hung thick until she’d climbed up to the hollow, above it. She hadn’t dared go near the kitchen, afraid if she saw her mama, she’d spill it all, what they planned to do. “They’ll ’spect I’ve gone off to draw. Long as I’m back afore too late . . .”

  Munin glided down to a nearby stone, trying for their attention. Ian paid him no mind. He’d brought the comb. “May I?”

  She’d shaken out her braid once she was well into the wood, coming to him with her hair loose like he’d asked. She nodded and he moved behind her, gathering up the hair at her temples, his touch tingling her scalp. She felt the comb slide in snug at the back, against the curve of her head. When he stood in front of her again, he held a circle of tiny white blossoms, last of the season, their stems woven into a crown.

  “A bride should have flowers, aye?” He fit the circlet on her head and stepped back. His smile made porridge of her knees, but somehow they bore her up as Ian led her to a birch tree, where the ground sloped toward the ridge. He held aside a branch and she ducked under it, holding her flower crown to keep it from tumbling.

  The tree was actually two, splitting out from each other at the base. Leaves like bright coins quivered around them and lay in a carpet at their feet. They were curtained in gold, tucked away from the world in a space big enough to stand up in, little wider than her arms might have reached stretched full.

  Ian stood close, smelling of sun and fresh-cut wood. He held her hand, rubbing his thumb against her wrist. Shy of the wanting in his eyes, she slid her gaze away. A breeze quivered the golden leaves on stems as slender as the hold she had on her calm.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  The corners of his mouth started to curl. “First I . . .” His smile vanished. “I meant to bind our wrists for the handfasting but didn’t bring anything for it.”

  “Turn round,” she said. He stared down at her, quizzical. “We could use your ribbon.”

  Relief flooded his face. “Good thinking.”

  He turned his back to her. Reaching up, she did what she’d wanted to do since the night of the Reynolds’ cornhusking, loosed the ribbon and spread his hair in waves across his shoulders, letting it run through her fingers.

  He faced her again, features framed now in every shade of gold from flax to barley. He rubbed a hand over his hair, mussing it some. “Ye don’t mind?”

  “I like your hair down.”

  “Ye do?” he said in plain surprise, then bent to kiss her. His lips lingered, soft as the fluttering in her belly, yet behind the softness she sensed something strong, deep enough to drown her, but so sweet she wanted it to. “Something we’ve in common then.”

  He took her hand and with the other looped the ribbon round their wrists. Twice he nearly had it tied but it slithered from his grasp. She helped with her free hand, laughing until their fingers worked together and the ribbon bound them wrist to wrist.

  For a second Seona feared what was coming and thought she might tear free and run from the hollow. “This—this is what your parents did?”

  His eyes warmed. “Aye. They were handfast in secret—like us.”

  “Why in secret?”

  “Mam was the only daughter with three elder brothers and one much younger—Callum, who sailed with us from Scotland. Mam had the raising of Callum and the keeping of my grandda’s croft in Aberdeen.”

  Seona’s fear was easing as he talked of his parents. They spread their fingers and linked them, palm to callused palm.

  “Da’s Highland-born, from a place called Glendessary, but he went to Inverness to apprentice himself to a bookbinder. That’s where one of my Lindsay uncles met him. I suppose the family thought an acquaintance with a lad hailing from the wild Highlands fine and good, but when that lad took a shine to their sister . . . they were having none of that. Mam was old enough to marry, but they insisted she was needed at home. True enough. But so was their wanting to wed.”

  “She liked him back?” Seona felt foolish in asking, like a child caught up in a story. Inverness. Glendessary. Aberdeen. There they were, hands bound and clasping, yet she felt like he stood across some wide river trying to tell her what was over on his side. He’d seen so many places she never would. Scotland, Boston, the wilds of Canada, everything in between.

  A leaf fell between them, landing on her hand, a splash of yellow. Ian turned their palms so it dropped into the cup of their fingers.

  “Aye, she liked him back,” he said, and with a look she felt down to her toes, he crossed back over to her side of that river. “They slipped away on a market day to be handfast. Then Da went back to Inverness. Mam went back to milking the goats. They met when they could, the family none the wiser, ’til six months later Mam got with child. Then there was a great fizz and kebby-lebby—as Mam puts it—but in the end they let her go to my da, and Callum with her.”

  His eyes, grown distant in the telling, now focused on her. She heard him pull in a breath, saw his chest swell with it. “How is it done?” she asked, with a fresh jolt to her nerves.

  “I’m meant to speak my vows to ye. Then ye’ll say yours to me.”

  “What vows?”

  Sunlight through the leaves speckled shadows across his face but didn’t hide his rising color. “Your intent to have me as your husband—if ye haven’t thought better of it by now.”

  Though his eyes were teasing, Seona hoped he wouldn’t guess how much she’d thought better of it, and worse of it, and chased herself in circles half the night over it. Shutting out every argument and prayer, she squeezed his hand. “I mean to have you.”

  “Good.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Reckon I’ll go first, then?”

  Before she could say a word, he fetched a breath and started in, sounding like he’d practiced the words.

  “I, Ian Robert Cameron, take thee, Seona, to be my wife. To provide for thee and defend thee, to be faithful unto thee in sickness and in health, in plenty and in need, in sorrow and in joy, while we both shall live. And hereto I pledge thee my word.”

  Seona blinked away tears. All this he was promising her, a woman of no account? How had it come to this? Yet there were his eyes, shining with tenderness and wanting. His mouth smiling. His hand bound to hers. She was shaking and knew he could feel it. His words echoed in her heart. To provide . . . defend . . . plenty and need . . . sorrow and joy . . . while we both shall live.

  She ached under her ribs, wanting to say them back to him and something more. Something more . . . “You didn’t mention the Lord. Seems like you ought to, time like this.”

  “Aye. Well . . .”

  It troubled her, the way he seemed to cast about for something to say. He was raised going to meeting. He’d said so. He was friendly with John Reynold, who spoke of the Almighty as easy as he breathed. Surely Ian believed, like M
alcolm had taught her and her mama to believe.

  “I might have mangled the wording a bit,” he said at last. “It’s years since I’ve heard the wedding service conducted. I ought to have said in the sight of God—is that what ye were missing?”

  She’d never heard a wedding service in her life but didn’t think that was the heart of the matter. She gulped down breath and somehow found the courage to ask, “Are you a child of God, Ian?”

  He laughed, though it sounded a little strained. “If ye mean do I believe in the Almighty, aye, of course I do. Did ye think me a heathen?” The puzzlement lifted from his brow. “Ye’ll have heard the injunction against being unequally yoked. That’s it, aye?”

  Yoked. Did he mean like a pair of oxen?

  “I was baptized Catholic as a bairn in Inverness,” he hurried to add. “Again after we joined my father in Boston. Only then it was the Presbyterians.” He nodded toward the pool, beyond the birches. “They do say third time’s lucky. I’ll do it now if it sets your mind at ease.”

  He was making light, but Seona didn’t feel light. If they were going to do this, be married, she wanted to know she shared with him something more than believing. But how to put into words the longing that pressed against her breastbone was beyond her. Maybe he didn’t have words for it either. Maybe it was something they’d have to learn to tell each other.

  “You don’t have to do it again.”

  “Good,” he said and with his free hand gave her hair a playful tug. “Now that’s out of the way . . . are ye ready?”

  It didn’t feel out of the way, but she nodded. In that moment she wanted Ian Cameron—more than she wanted to draw. More than she wanted breath. More than she feared the notion.

  “I, Seona,” she began, forming each word with care, “take you—thee—Ian Robert Cameron, to be my husband. . . .” What all she said wasn’t a match in prettiness for his words to her, but his face shone with an eager joy as she finished. “To be your wife in plenty or want, happy or sad, while we both live. That is my promise.”

  The tears on her cheeks surprised her. “Did we do it? Are we married?”

  He kissed each knuckle of the hand bound to his before kissing her mouth, soft at first. Then he pulled her closer and kissed her until she had no breath.

  She reckoned that meant yes.

  The contents of the knapsack he’d filled that morning littered the quilt between them—a buffer of restraint, rapidly diminishing. Half an apple pie. Cold chicken. Biscuits fit for the house table. Ian was halfway through the repast before noticing who was devouring most of it. Perhaps Seona’s nerves were working on her by stealing her appetite. He was suffering the reverse. He ached to touch her again.

  Conscious of her watching, he took off his coat before he went to fill the canteen at the pool. The raven was back, hopping along the rocks at the creek’s edge.

  “Our witness,” he said, settling back on the quilt.

  Seona drew her knees up. He noticed a small tear in her skirt, yet to be mended. The shift beneath had ridden up, exposing skin at the bend of her knee. He brushed it with a fingertip. Her hand came down to cover the hole.

  Munin opened a silent beak, one eye cocked at Seona. “Look at her now,” said the bird, with all the suggestion of a courting swain.

  “I am looking,” Ian said. “She’s beautiful.”

  “So are you,” Seona said.

  “Me?”

  His surprise made her blush. “You used to be so skinny, like a heron in a creek. But even with your knobby knees you looked like an angel to me.”

  He stared. She wasn’t teasing. “Not ye, too!” He fell back onto the quilt with a groan. “My manly pride is crushed. On my wedding day, no less.”

  Her laughter, low and musical as the falls, was worth the theatrics. “Someone else said that?”

  “Oh, aye. Cecily Reynold for one.” He grasped both hands full of his hair. “Because of this. But Cecily wasn’t the first.”

  Though no longer the towhead he’d been in childhood, he’d worn his curls cropped at eighteen, when he left Boston with Callum. “It was my uncle’s partner in the fur trade, a Frenchman called LeJeune. He took one look at me, pretended to swoon over my curls, and never called me aught again but Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel.” She mimicked his French inflection perfectly, then fell to giggling.

  “Go on then. Laugh.” He clasped his hands across his brow and closed his eyes. Sunlight came warm through his eyelids. “It’s why I let my hair grow, to be rid of the curls.”

  “Gabriel,” she said again. Then softly, “My angel.”

  He rose up on his elbows. She’d been leaning over and the movement brought them close. Her hair spilled dark against his shirtsleeve, more tightly coiled than his had ever been.

  “Not that I’ve aught against curls. Generally speaking.” Sitting up straight, he ran his hand down the length of her thigh as he kissed her. His fingers found the small rent in her skirt again. Again her hand came down.

  “I wish I had a nice gown—for today.”

  He took her hand in his. “Ye will, Seona—many of them. But they don’t matter now.” He turned her palm over and brushed his lips across it. “I have what I want.”

  Moments later she made a sound that might have been pleasure or protest. He pulled back from their embrace, searching her face. “We don’t have to do this now if ye don’t want to.”

  Seona took his head between her hands. “Do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  Smiling at his earnestness, she moved her fingers to his neckcloth. She unwound it and folded it atop his coat. Then she spread open the neck of his shirt. Cool air touched his skin, then warmth as she slid her hands beneath the linen and laid her cheek to his chest.

  “I hear your heart.”

  “Not mine.” He held her, burying his face in the fall of her hair. The circlet of flowers had fallen away, but their fragrance lingered, sweetly intoxicating. “Not anymore. It’s yours.”

  22

  The shouting reached her on the path, halting her as if the breeze coming off the ridge had turned to ice and frozen her to the ground.

  “Seo-naaa!” Esther came into sight and spotted her. “Seona! Where you been? Master Hugh done sent us out to holler you home.”

  Esther raced down the path, skirt flying, yet she seemed to move too slow for running, so slow Seona had time to think of Ian, gone to the Reynolds’ so they wouldn’t return together. She pictured him at Miss Cecily’s table, thinking her home safe, nobody the wiser to what they’d done. Fear shot through her.

  “Why the fuss? I’m allowed to go off and draw on a Sunday if I take a notion.” Would Esther see she had no lead, no paper?

  The girl barreled into her. “It’s Mister Allen! His missus got that baby coming. Your mama wants your help catching it.”

  She’d scant time to welcome relief before they reached the stable-yard, thrown into shadow by clouds blown in on the breeze that really was chilling now. Zeb Allen stood with his horse in a lather, haggard and distraught. Lily clasped her simples box while Jubal saddled a second horse, one of Master Hugh’s.

  “I ought to have come sooner. Rebecca didn’t think she’d need—” Zeb Allen passed a hand over his mouth, as if to rub out what more he might have said.

  Lily caught sight of her. “Seona, get ye to the house and fetch the pass Master Hugh’s writing us.”

  Seona went, with a dread in her chest that twisted hard at the door of Master Hugh’s room. He was at his desk, sifting sand over a freshly inked paper. She clasped her hands to stop their shaking, afraid what she and Ian had done must show on her face.

  “They found ye, I see.” Master Hugh was a big man—every Cameron male she’d ever seen stood tall—but now his long bones seemed stripped of flesh, like he was being eaten from within. He folded the pass and held it out. As she took it, his hand closed over hers. “Tell Zeb they’ve my prayers, for what they’re worth.”

  The blue of
his eyes was lighter than Ian’s, faded, haunted with old griefs. She knew he was thinking of his first wife, who died birthing their baby girl.

  “I wish I’d known her,” Seona said, then wished she’d held her tongue, but Master Hugh’s eyes went soft, even as the pain in them deepened.

  “So do I. Stay as long as ye’re needed. I’ve sent provisions, something to set on Zeb’s table.” He gave her hand a squeeze and let go. “Away wi’ ye, lass. The woman’s suffering.”

  Lily was in the saddle when Seona reached the yard. Jubal hoisted her up behind. Through years of being hired out as midwife, her mama had learned to keep her wits on a horse. Seona clung to her waist as they splashed across the creek and broke into a smoother gait out on the road, following Mister Allen.

  She shut her eyes and was back under the birches with Ian, sunlight dazzling through yellow leaves, nothing but his body holding her to the earth. . . .

  “Where ye been all the morn, girl-baby?” Lily asked over the noise of hooves and creaking saddle.

  Seona pretended not to hear. “This one gonna be a boy or girl, Mama?”

  Lily most often guessed right, but she didn’t answer for a spell. In the silence dread bloomed. “Boy,” she said finally, the word bitten sharp, borne back on the wind.

  The Allen cabin lay over the ridge, a mile by winding trails, farther but quicker by road. It was past midday when they reached it, down a track through cornfields where cattle grazed on stubble. In a fold between the hills Zeb Allen had built two snug cabins for his brood, a covered dogtrot between. There the younger Allen children clustered. From one of the open cabins came the mewling of a newborn.

  “Thank God Almighty,” Mister Allen said before a moan tore through the air.

  The eldest girl, Katy, came out to the dogtrot holding a bundle. Above it her face was white and scared. “Pa? I done caught this’un, but Ma’s paining again.”

  Another moan from within the cabin worked like a shove on the oldest Allen boy. Stumbling in his haste, he took their horses’ reins as they dismounted, calling to his brothers to come down to the barn, leaving Katy and little Ruthie, who had a fist jammed in her mouth.