Lori Benton

by Burning Sky

  The barking escalated, sharp with warning.

  They were staring at the cabin door when the thump of feet sounded on the porch and Matthew entered, dragging the collie by the scruff. The dog was woofing low in its throat.

  Willa heard a horse in the yard. Seconds later a heavy tread creaked the porch boards and Richard Waring filled the doorway, blocking out the light. He took in the mess she and the children had made—spilled flour, slimy pumpkin pulp and seeds spotting the table and floor, as well as themselves. He grimaced at Willa’s clothes—the deerskin skirt and stroud tunic she still found most convenient to wear around the farm, those she’d worn the day she found Neil MacGregor in the laurels.

  She shook away Neil’s image and the regret that pierced her.

  The collie was still growling low in its throat.

  “Matthew, take that animal outside.” The boy did as she said, edging past Richard with unconcealed dislike.

  Maggie, unwilling to abandon her baking pie, was all but hugging the edge of the hearth.

  “Don’t scorch yourself,” Willa told her with all the normalcy she could muster. “Stand at a safe distance from that oven.”

  Richard glanced at the girl, then back at Willa, looking as if he’d swallowed something bitter. “How long do you mean to keep them?”

  Willa, concealing how deeply this unexpected visitation had her rattled, rounded the table and stepped onto the porch without answering the question.

  A mother quail leading the wolf from her chick.

  Richard followed her out.

  Without looking she knew Matthew had taken the collie to the horse shed and was crouched there with it, watching her, uncertain what to do. She knew the small movements Maggie made inside the cabin—cleaning up their pie making without having to be asked. She was conscious of the ax embedded in the chopping stump and how many strides off the side of the porch it would take her to reach it.

  The last thing she took in was Richard’s mare. Something large was rolled and tied behind its saddle. Richard stepped off the porch. He took the rolled thing off the horse, and she realized what it was. A feather tick.

  “Goodenough thought to send this to you.” He looked at her with his pale eyes giving the lie to his words, ran a finger down a row of tiny stitches in the tick’s muslin covering, then set it on the porch.

  Willa made her hands into fists, then remembered he’d asked her a question before they stepped out of the cabin.

  “I will keep these children as long as they need me to keep them.” She’d been tempted to say “for always.” Was it only to spite Richard, who clearly wished them gone? She couldn’t look too closely at that thought. Doing so would lead to other thoughts. Thoughts about a blue-eyed botanist who had wanted her to keep them, who had wanted her to keep him …

  Instead, she thought of Joseph, who meant to take the children away. But she mustn’t think of Joseph either, not with Richard looking at her as if his eyes could burn through her skull to read her thoughts. He hadn’t liked her answer, she could see that, but he swallowed it without argument.

  He strode to the end of the porch and looked out at the fields past which he’d ridden. “Your corn is nearly ready for harvesting. I’ll send Aram Crane to help you, once he returns.”

  Crane, the deserter, the Indian killer. Willa’s skin crawled.

  Then her senses pricked to that last word. “Returns? From where?”

  “I sent him back east, on an errand I couldn’t attend to myself.” Richard still spoke with his back turned, sounding at ease and yet … evasive.

  “What errand?” Willa said, unable now not to think of Joseph. If Richard had sent Crane back east, what did this mean for Joseph’s plans to return the man to the British?

  Richard chuckled low in his throat. “He was eager enough to do it—didn’t even take the food Goodenough put together for him or wait till morning like he said he’d do. He’ll have the deed done and be back in plenty of time for the harvest.”

  His tone, dark and smug, sent spikes of dread through Willa. Had this errand—whatever it could be—something to do with her? She was sorely tempted to tell him what sort of man he and his father had been harboring in their stable, but then Richard would want to know how she had come by such knowledge.

  “I was wondering, though,” Richard said. “Have you seen that Scotsman, MacGregor, of late? Has he sent you word?”

  A sick feeling coiled in her belly, hearing Neil’s name on Richard’s lips. “Sent me word? Of what?”

  “Nothing. I only wondered had you heard from him.”

  She wished Richard would turn around so she might see his eyes, though talking to the back of him gave her better courage.

  “I have not been into Shiloh to see anyone for days.” And it had been all she could do for each hour of those days not to abandon her fields, which seemed a cage and not a haven of late, and race down the path to Anni’s, through the mill and down to the smithy to do a thing the very thought of which struck terror in her heart—throw herself, and her future, into Neil MacGregor’s arms. “And I will not need Aram Crane’s help in my fields. I—”

  “You’re right.” Richard faced her and crossed the porch to halt so close she took an involuntary step back. “One man isn’t enough. I’ll come as well.”

  His inability to accept her refusal left her furious, and momentarily speechless.

  Through the cabin door came the smell of baking pie, spicy and sweet. Relieved for the distraction, she opened her mouth to tell Maggie to check the oven to be sure it wasn’t too hot.

  The instant she looked away, Richard’s arm snaked out like a grasping vine and pulled her tight against him.

  The kiss was hard to the point of bruising, his hands on her like the jaws of a trap. She tried to pull away—not with undue force, fearing what might follow if she fought too hard and angered him. The children were within his reach.

  He seemed not to notice her resistance. She abandoned it and with wooden patience bore the violation of his lips and hands until he drew back of his own accord and looked down at her.

  “I know you don’t love me, Willa, but you need me. I can give you what you want—this land—and I will, if you agree to one thing.”

  There was triumph in his eyes, hot and burning. She wanted only to wipe her mouth. “What is that?”

  “Marry me.”

  Anger buzzed in her ears like the whirring of insects. She felt the crawl of insects too, down her spine, her flanks, her thighs, in the seconds of silence before Richard put his big hand to her face, his fingers at her temple, his thumb beneath her jaw.

  There was more threat than tenderness in the touch.

  “Think before you answer, Willa. I wanted no other when we were young and still don’t—though God knows I’ve tried. Over and again I’ve filled my mind with every imagining of you that tormented me those first few years, hoping to crush what seeing you again made me feel, and still I want you. Even knowing …”

  Even knowing that a savage had had her first. That was what he was thinking. And it was not enough to make him leave her be. Maybe she could make it easier for him.

  “Did Anni tell you I bore him children?” she asked. “I rejoiced when each of them filled my belly, and had they lived, you would never have seen my face again. These children here you are so eager to see me send away? They could have been mine and Kingfisher’s.”

  An ugliness rippled over Richard’s face, and Willa feared she’d said too much, pushed him too far. Then something stirred in his eyes she hadn’t expected and didn’t know how to fight.

  A tainted curiosity.

  “I tried to spare you that,” he said. “I tried to find you.”

  “That boy who looked for me is no more,” Willa said, desperate now to make him leave, “and I will not be the wife of the man who stands before me now. Nor will I be your tenant. I have nothing to give you, Richard. I want nothing from you—save that you leave me in peace to live in quiet on my land
.”

  It was there—in his eyes gone chill as winter, in the bulge of his jaw, in the whiteness of his cheekbones, sharp under the strain—the explosion Willa dreaded.

  It was at that moment she glanced past him and saw Matthew.

  While she’d had her focus solely on Richard, the boy had circled the cabin and was standing now behind Richard, at the end of the porch, the ax gripped in his hands.

  For the flick of an instant, their eyes locked. Willa gave the tiniest shake of her head.

  It was enough. The boy melted back around the side of the cabin as Richard turned to see what she was looking at. There was nothing to see but the empty chopping stump.

  He took a step back from her and said with a curving lip, “Keep the tick. Winter’s coming. It’ll be a cold one for you.”

  Richard banged down the steps and heaved his big frame onto his horse. She did not expect him to say another word, but once settled in the saddle, he looked at her.

  “You’re friendly with the smith’s wife, aren’t you?”

  The question left her blinking. He was asking about Leda MacNab, after all the terrible things they had just said to each other?

  “What of her?”

  “Not her. MacNab. He took a fall from his horse a few days back, out by the mill. Broke his leg. Pretty bad, I hear.”

  Willa frowned, trying to take this in. She’d seen no one in days, not Anni, not Francis, no one to tell her this bad thing had happened. Was Neil taking care of his friend? Surely he must be. Still, Willa’s impulse was to go to Leda.

  With her next breath, she knew she didn’t dare. She’d made herself a prisoner to her land. If she left it, who would guard it? Only for the greatest necessity would she leave now.

  Would this ever end? Even if she somehow saved her land from that auction and no one took it from her, would there ever come a day she could live there in peace, without some threat from Richard hanging over her?

  Looking inexplicably amused at her concern and indecision, Richard nodded a farewell and rode away, leaving her more shaken than she had been since coming there to find her parents gone.

  Once he was well out of the yard, off down the track past the fields, Matthew climbed the porch steps, still holding the ax, and stood beside her.

  Maggie came out of the cabin, round eyed and grave.

  Willa drew them to her, one in each arm. The girl pressed her face into her ribs.

  Matthew’s voice was tightly controlled. “I wish Mr. MacGregor was here.”

  “So do I,” came his sister’s tremulous reply, half-muffled against Willa’s side. “Is he praying for us?”

  “He said he would,” her brother replied.

  There was a thickening in Willa’s throat as she hugged the children to her. “He is a man of his word,” she said, sounding choked. “We are not defenseless. God is with us.”

  That was what Neil would have said, she was sure. It was what the children needed to hear—what she needed to hear. The words didn’t sound as convincing when they came out of her mouth, but there was no other mouth to say them now.

  Please. It was the first time she’d prayed, even in the quiet of her thoughts, for days. Too many days. But it came now from a raw place, a true place, far down inside her soul. Please.

  They stood there together for a few seconds more. Then Willa gave the children’s shoulders a squeeze and said, “Let’s check on that pie. It would be a shame to let it burn, hen’en?”

  Not until she lay in her bed, full of pie and worry, did it strike Willa: of the two men most concerned with their lives, the man the children had wanted to defend them wasn’t the warrior, Joseph, but the healer, Neil.

  As did I.

  The knowledge swelled beneath her ribs, sharp as broken glass, and it was far into the night before she had smashed the shards small enough to draw a calming breath around them.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Francis was pacing the cabin yard when they came in from the field, laden with baskets full of gourds and squash. The collie, last seen sleeping on the porch, slunk behind him like a fretful shadow. Willa quickened her pace, belly twisting with dread.

  “Francis … what is wrong?” Francis halted and stammered something unintelligible. Willa set her basket on the porch and told the children, “Take this into the cabin.”

  They cast wide looks at Anni’s agitated brother as they climbed the porch steps. When they were inside, Willa did a thing she had never done—grabbed Francis by the arm and gave him a shake.

  “Francis! Did Anni send you?”

  Stringy blond hair whipped across his shoulders as Francis shook his head, a violent denial that startled Willa into releasing him.

  “What is it, then? What is wrong?”

  “I meant to s-s-say—” Francis stuttered to a halt, then blurted, “Anni needs you.”

  “So she did send you? Is it the baby coming?”

  This was odd, even for Francis. First no. Then yes. And now he wouldn’t look at her.

  “Francis,” she began impatiently, but stopped herself. Either Anni’s baby was coming and she was needed, or it wasn’t. But what ought to be straightforward for a person to say or do, Francis would come at it roundabout, or not at all.

  Willa reached for calm. She was going to have to go to Anni, and see. “It will be all right. You did well to come to me.”

  “I did well,” Francis repeated under his breath, but he didn’t look well. His face was pinched, and he’d gone back to pacing, long skinny fingers all but snapping off like twigs against his leg. “I did well …”

  With no time to spare for puzzling him out, she hurried up the cabin steps, only to be met at the door by Maggie, thrusting the carrying basket at her. “We put in everything. All your plant medicines, linen pads, salves. There’s a skin of water. And the leftover corn cakes, in case you get hungry.”

  Amazed by the child’s quick thinking, Willa turned and settled the arm straps and tumpline into place while Maggie supported the basket. Then she took the child’s face between her hands, bent, and kissed her cheek. “You are a good girl.”

  She drew back, struck to her fast-beating heart by the child’s blazing smile.

  “Matthew helped,” she said as her brother appeared behind her.

  Willa didn’t stop to consider the dignity the boy strived so hard to protect. She lifted a hand to his head and kissed him too, smelling his sweat-dampened hair and his young boy’s scent. “Look after your sister. Do not leave the cabin, no matter how long I’m gone.”

  Francis stood at the foot of the porch steps, darting hunted glances all around as if he expected hungry wolves to come bursting into the clearing. A bruise was coming up on his cheekbone. Willa hadn’t noticed until now. There was no time to ask about it.

  “Francis, stay with them. And you both, stay inside—” She turned, admonishing the children once more, and nearly fell across the collie, still milling about. “And keep this dog back!”

  Matthew grabbed the dog as she raced for the path to Anni’s cabin.

  She was halfway there before it occurred to her to wonder why she’d been sent for when Neil MacGregor was right there in town. Not to mention Goodenough and Leda MacNab. Maybe Anni simply wanted her there at such a time. For the sake of our friendship now …

  Memory of Anni’s words to her weeks ago warmed her, and she smiled as she trotted along the path, thankful for how Anni had stood by her, even though it had been hard for her to accept all the ways in which her years with the Mohawks had remade her. And now there was to be a new addition to Anni’s family, not born too soon, despite the trial this pregnancy had been for Anni. She ran on smiling through the woods, praying all would be well.

  The smile faded as the sound of a moan, low with suffering, met her at the edge of Anni’s yard.

  Willa ran full out the final distance to the cabin. Anni was in the back room where the family slept, but a quick glance revealed that aside from her little daughter, she was alone. Samantha,
hovering over a kettle at the hearth, pale hair plastered to her scalp with steam, burst into wails when Willa came through the cabin door.

  “Miss Willa! Mama’s dying!”

  Anni, seeing her from the bed in the adjoining room, struggled to sit up. “I’m not dying, sweet—” A groan stifled the reassurance.

  Willa hurried through the cabin, banging her carrying basket on the door frame, nearly staggering into the back room. An old quilt and straw tick had been spread over the bed ropes, the good feather tick and bed coverings stripped off and tossed in a corner. Anni wore a shift, half-drenched with sweat and birth waters.

  “Why are you alone, Anni? Where is Charles?”

  “There wasn’t time. It’s come on so fast—” Her face went a strained and livid red for a count of heartbeats. Then she went limp into the nest of sweaty pillows at her back. “Maybe I am dying …”

  Willa slipped off the basket and set it on the floor. She found a rag and a basin half-filled with water and wiped Anni’s gleaming brow. “Do not say such a thing,” she began, but Anni grasped her hand, squeezing hard.

  “This one’s different.” She kept her voice low, but Willa caught the current of panic surging just under the surface. “It hurts more. A lot more.”

  So had Willa’s labors been nothing alike. Goes-Singing had taken an agonizing day and night to birth, while Sweet Rain had taken barely half a morning. That was the usual way of it. First births were long. Second births went faster. But not always.

  She hid her concern behind a mask of calm and for the second time asked, “Anni, where is Charles?”

  Anni moved her head across the pillows. “I was fine this morning. Feeling stronger. Charles had been talking for days about riding down to the ford at West Canada to talk to a cutter about a new stone for the mill. I told him to go on.”

  “What about Leda? Goodenough? Has no one sent for them?”

  “Sam went for Leda just before you got here. She’s closest.”