by Laura Frantz
He stared down at her, his low voice skipping any pleasantries. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here? I’d have put you on the first wagon.”
“There was no need. I’m not injured.” Her gaze fell to her lap.
I’m simply a bedraggled mess, without coin or comb.
As badly as she wanted to be home, she did not wish to be singled out. This preferential treatment was what she was running from. Besides, Rose usually handled all the details for travel. Without her maid’s plucky presence, Ellie hardly knew what to do.
She raised wary eyes to his, finding him more mud than man, his clothes in tatters. He managed to look bemused . . . somewhat mocking. Leaning into the table, he motioned to a serving girl in a checkered cap and kerchief.
“Tea,” he said quietly. “Some bread.”
With a smile the girl disappeared, as if taking orders from the inn’s owner. But the owner was busy serving Turlock whiskey behind a long, scarred counter hedged with a cage. Business, from the looks of all the thirsty gathering there, was brisk.
“You’re in want of a room,” he told her. “Then we’ll leave in the morning.”
“We?” Her mouth formed a perfect O as she said it.
His sharp gaze pinned her so there would be no mistaking his meaning. “You’re in need of an escort to take you home—a chaperone.”
“I’m in need of a chaperone?” she echoed in disbelief.
To keep me safe from the likes of you.
Humor lit his gray eyes and warmed them the color of pewter, as if he well knew what she was thinking. “I’ll return you to New Hope myself, out of respect for your father.”
My father? The man who jailed you countless times?
Speechless, she felt a rush of gratitude override her surprise as the requested tea and bread arrived, the latter slathered with butter and honey. Her stomach gave a little lurch of anticipation, but she pushed the plate his way. He’d not said they were hers, so she’d make no assumptions.
With a long, grubby finger, he pushed the plate back toward her, along with the steaming tea. Famished, she bent her head and breathed a quick prayer before biting off a corner of bread, a cascade of crumbs spilling down her wrinkled bodice.
“I can do little about how you look, but I can certainly feed you,” he said drily.
She stopped chewing, heat creeping into her cheeks, and remembered her trunk. Had the coachman ever repaired the axle and gotten this far? Or was he still stuck, hemmed in by countless fallen trees—or worse? Concerned for his safety, she nevertheless rued the loss of her belongings. Perhaps she could beg a comb. Some hairpins. Taking a sip of tea, she felt immediately better. Tea was comfort. Tranquility. Civility.
“I can walk home,” she said, setting her cup aside and brushing the crumbs from her dress. “’Tis but a few miles more. I don’t need an escort.”
Quirking an eyebrow, he looked beneath the table at her feet. Ever-practical Jack. Quickly she drew her sodden slippers beneath the muddy hem of her skirt.
“Five miles and you’d be barefoot. Ten and you’d end up begging a ride. There’s a sidesaddle in the stable—or a coach.”
Those were her choices then. Since her riding clothes were in her trunk, she’d have to take a coach. Only she had no coin . . . “My belongings were atop the stage that broke down a few miles east of here. The driver—I trust he’s all right—”
“There’s been no loss of life that we know of, just injuries. But I’ll send someone back that way to be sure.”
Relieved, she confessed, “My pocketbook is missing—lost in the storm.”
“Why aren’t you in Philadelphia?”
She winced at his bold question. Her father would soon ask her the same, only his tone would be more gracious, surely. “I—I’m done with finishing school. ’Tis time I return home.”
“You picked a poor time to do it,” he murmured.
She took another sip of tea, unable to refute this fact, glancing toward the kitchen but snagging on his profile instead. He was looking up at the men repairing the roof, the feeble light framing him as it spilled through. His coloring shocked her, so deeply tanned one would think he was a common laborer and spent all his time outdoors. His features had always been sharply handsome, almost hawkish, his hair the color of summer straw, not whiskey-dark like Wade’s. That he was a worldly man there could be no doubt. He even moved with an ease and agility far removed from the stiff formality of society’s drawing rooms. He was, in a word, different. And dangerous.
Father would not approve.
2
A low voice and soft address are the common indications of a well-bred woman.
HANNAH MORE
Somewhat miraculously, Jack Turlock delivered both coach driver and trunk. Ellie thanked him and went above stairs to the room he’d arranged for her, feeling uncomfortably in his debt. Now, with baggage to manage, she let go of her ludicrous plan to walk, finally agreeing to the coach he’d hired. He’d ride alongside her, he said, the remaining miles into Pittsburgh and out the Greensburg Road to New Hope.
Getting into the coach the next morning, she sighed. Traveling together was as appetizing as last week’s she-crab soup.
Settling back on the seat, she lifted the leather window shade to survey the damage from the storm, an unwelcome thought piercing the fog of her discontent. Was her home as badly damaged? Though New Hope was brick solid and even the chapel was made of stone, the devastation unfolding all around her seemed to whisper a warning. She was barely aware of the sudden shift of clouds overhead, so fixed was her gaze upon the ground.
Enormous trees lay toppled like kindling, requiring the coach to weave and lurch in crazy fashion, bringing nausea to the back of her throat. As thunder growled and lightning lit the sky, disbelief pummeled her. At least there was no wind, just gray sheets of rain that marred her view and soaked Jack Turlock to the skin. Though she disliked the man, she didn’t want him dead. Slamming shut the shade, she raised a gloved hand and thumped on the lacquered ceiling. The coach slowly shuddered to a stop, and her escort climbed inside. When another flash of lightning lit the landscape an eerie white, she almost expected the coachman to follow.
Uttering a curse, Jack Turlock settled on the seat opposite, wet as a woodland creature and twice as riled. “Pardon my profanity.”
The apology startled her more than the oath. The Turlocks were notoriously unrepentant, not given to admitting wrong. She dug for her handkerchief and dangled it before him like a white flag of truce, wondering if her family had erred in writing them off. Might there be some spark of redemption here?
But the aggravation in his eyes snuffed her hopes, though he did take the embroidered linen and mopped his brow. Rain beaded the darkened ends of his hair and dripped onto his muddy shirt. Handing the handkerchief back to her, he gave a vicious shake of his head, splattering her in the process.
Just like one of Father’s sheepdogs.
“Mr. Turlo—”
“Jack,” he corrected, locking eyes with her.
Her chin lifted. “I’ll not call you anything but Mr. Turlock.”
“And I’ll not call you anything but Ellie. This foolish formality is more aggravating than the weather. We’ve grown up alongside each other for twenty years or better. My mother, if you remember, nearly married your father.”
A near catastrophe, she didn’t say.
Isabel O’Hara Turlock was a force to be reckoned with at fifty. Ellie could well imagine what she’d been like at twenty. The Turlock matron and Mama were as different as paste jewelry and gemstones.
“Actually, our ties are more long-standing than that,” she said, in the mood to contradict him. “My father built New Hope in 1793—”
“And River Hill was established sixteen years prior,” he interrupted. “Without my grandfather’s backing, your father wouldn’t have had the land for New Hope to begin with.”
Her chin lifted a tad higher. “So the Turlocks say.”
“
I suppose the Ballantynes—and Camerons—say otherwise.”
“And always will.”
He rolled his eyes. “At least we agree on something.”
She wouldn’t ask but wondered what he was doing at Widow Meyer’s Tavern, if he was on his way to River Hill. Upon Judge O’Hara’s death, he’d inherited the sprawling estate along the Monongahela River, while Wade, the heir, resided at Broad Oak, a few miles west of New Hope.
Leaning back on the seat, he crossed his arms. “Where is your maid?”
His familiarity nicked her. “Where is your manservant?”
“I have none.”
“Nor do I have a maid,” she replied, pinched by Rose’s loss. “She eloped a fortnight ago.”
“I’ve seen you with her in Philadelphia.”
Oh? Did his taste run to tavern wenches and ladies’ maids? “I’ve never seen you in the city.”
“I have business there on occasion.” At her frown, he added with no levity, “The devil’s business.”
At this, she almost gave him a knowing smile, for that was exactly what she’d been thinking. “I wouldn’t have encountered you, I suppose, as we don’t frequent the same places.”
“No doubt.” Clearing his throat, he produced a sodden paper, his voice a bit mocking. “‘Elinor Louise Ballantyne is an agreeable young lady with a fortune upward of twenty thousand pounds . . .’”
She looked on, disbelieving. The Matrimonial Society bulletin? How had he gotten that?
“The Society erred, of course, in their calculation of family fortunes,” he told her. “With your father’s holdings, you’re worth a good deal more than stated.”
“What?”
He turned the paper over. “Aye, specifically the ‘Table Showing the Exact Situation in Life and Personal Qualities of Known Marriageable Ladies.’”
Leaning forward, she snatched the bulletin from his hand. She fisted it, opened the coach window, and tossed it out, to his obvious amusement. “What do you know about the Matrimonial Society?”
“Enough to avoid it.”
“I don’t suppose they issued you an invitation?”
“They did but I declined, though it was tempting once I saw the heiresses offered, you being one of them.”
“You’re jesting.”
“Nay, I’ve long been smitten with you, Ellie. Ever since you crossed the creek years ago and brought me a sheepdog pup to replace the one I’d lost.”
Smitten? She wouldn’t succumb to that foolish notion. Yet his expression, for the barest moment, was so serious she knew he spoke the truth about the puppy, though she had no recollection of it.
He shrugged. “You’d have been about four to my ten. Too young to remember.”
Truly, she only remembered the sticks, stones, and spats. “’Twas probably Mama’s doing to give you the puppy. She was always trying to mend hearts.”
“It wouldn’t have been Andra,” he said bluntly.
No, not Andra. Her older sister’s heart was half stone.
The patter of rain on the roof grew louder, and they rode on in stilted silence, locked in the still, semidark interior of a coach far inferior to what Ellie was used to. She almost groaned when the contraption lurched to a halt and nearly spilled her onto Jack Turlock’s lap. While he exited to investigate, she held her breath, praying they’d continue on. Pittsburgh was so close . . .
Long minutes passed before the coach door cracked open again and he motioned her out, his horse near at hand. Shock scuttled through her. He wanted her to ride? She looked heavenward as if seeking answers. But the fickle spring sky was now a robin’s-egg blue, backing up his startling invitation.
Beside them, the coachman mopped his sodden brow and glowered at the immense elm blocking the road from stem to stern ahead of them. Muttering, he turned and began unhitching the team, intent on returning to the tavern.
Ellie felt the pressure of a callused hand as Jack mounted the fine, dun-colored stallion and pulled her up after him. With her skirts hitched so, her stocking-clad ankles showing above hopelessly soiled slippers, she frantically worked to assume a ladylike posture—impossible when not riding sidesaddle. They were soon careening down the mud-slicked road over brush and round impediments as if the devil was on their heels, rattling her very bones. Was Jack . . . liquored? The faintest hint of spirits wafted back to her as her thoughts began an agonized rotation.
Father cannot see me like this. Even the help will be scandalized. I’ll make Jack leave me at the gate—no, the lane—before reaching home . . .
Heaven help her, why the worry?
She wouldn’t live to see New Hope!
New Hope’s immense front gate was surprisingly plain with a bold B affixed in the center. Wrought in iron, it was a reminder of the Ballantynes’ humble blacksmithing roots. Pittsburgh had been raw wilderness back then, and New Hope a poor Scotsman’s dream, not the jewel crowning the Allegheny bluff that stopped river traffic midstream. Like a pearl in an oyster, the main house rose in gray-bricked splendor, a spacious veranda with ivory columns soaring to the second story on all sides, Palladian windows abounding.
No wonder Ellie Ballantyne wanted to come home. Now, in spring, all the lushness of the season held sway. Fields unfolded around them, worked by Ballantyne hands—not slaves but indentures and free blacks—and Jack’s eye was drawn to a large garden and orchard sprawling to the south, the trees full of fragrant blossoms. He tore his attention from the stirring sight as Ellie shifted in the saddle behind him.
Parched from their twelve-mile ride, his throat felt like river sand, though Ellie hadn’t complained. He’d stop at a nearby creek to drink if refreshments were denied him, and he wagered they would be. Not once had a Turlock set foot at New Hope. If the Ballantynes entertained, the Turlocks weren’t invited.
Moving beyond the gate, he started down the drive, dismay sitting square in his gut at the sight of once-towering oaks and elms felled as if by an ax, their massive roots a muddy stain upon the glistening grass. Alarm ticked inside him. Was River Hill the same?
He sensed Ellie’s shock as she rode at his back. Though she’d made a feeble protest as they’d turned in the gate, telling him she could walk the rest of the way, he’d ignored her, and her pleas had become whisper-thin. When he finally dismounted and helped her down after him, he felt a jolt at the tears welling in her eyes. But she dashed them away with a quick hand as a figure emerged on the porch.
Jack’s hopes rose, then extinguished like candle flame. He’d expected the housekeeper, though he’d dared to hope Silas Ballantyne would be waiting. Everyone from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia knew Ellie was the apple of her father’s eye. Jack figured he’d scored quite a victory rescuing her as he’d done. And he was honest enough to admit he wanted to ingratiate himself with the most respected man in Allegheny County by bringing his beloved daughter home unharmed.
Instead he faced Andra, the fire of dislike in her eyes, her posture soldier-stiff. She gave him no more than a disdainful glance as she focused on her little sister, who, Jack noted with grim amusement, was missing a shoe.
Ellie’s narrow, stocking-clad foot hovered over the wet stone walk. She looked down in surprise and then up at Jack, open blame in her blue eyes. He’d ridden hard and fast to get her here—his horse was lathered and drooping behind them and in dire need of a drink. But from the set of Andra’s jaw, he knew he’d get no water or welcome.
“I’d invite you in,” she said with a voice that bore a burr of her father’s Scots speech, “but since River Hill is so close, I’m sure you’re anxious to assess the damage to your own home place.”
Close? River Hill was miles more and likely littered with a blow-down the likes of which he’d never seen. But he wouldn’t give the righteous Andra the privilege of seeing his disappointment. Schooling his emotions as he’d done at every Ballantyne snub, he turned without a word and mounted Cicero, intent on the nearest creek, and tried not to smile as his horse wheeled round and slung mud on
the skirt of Andra’s fine dress.
Andra waited till Jack Turlock was out of earshot before wheeling on Ellie, face berry-red and tone blistering. “Elinor Louise! The shock of having you arrive home without warning is enough! You didn’t have to bring a Turlock to boot! And now my dress!”
Bare foot forgotten, Ellie winced as Andra began shouting for a maid, summoning Peyton in the process. He stepped onto the battered veranda smeared with wet leaves and broken branches, impeccably dressed and seeming oblivious to the mess. His familiar chuckle set her at ease, though he made no move to hug her. No doubt she’d soil his suit.
“So, little sister . . . did you get off on the wrong foot with Andra?”
The pun was not lost on Ellie as Andra pushed past them, still fuming. “Where’s Father? Mother?”
“Downriver in New Orleans. They’ll be back the end of June.”
A whole two months more? She swallowed down her disappointment. By then Andra would have exhausted every means to return her to Philadelphia. “And Ansel?”
Peyton cocked his head and raised a brow. “Don’t you hear him? He’s in the music room at the moment, and the door is open.”
The trill of a violin sent her scurrying past into the still, shadowed foyer. Here everything was as calm as it was chaotic outside. Fine wood paneling and Dutch and Flemish paintings gave the impression of a grand country house, the parquet floor and timeworn furnishings a genteel reminder of another century. She kept walking toward the last door on the left, tucked behind an immense curving stair. Of all the rooms in the house, this was the most beloved, at least to her and Ansel, the home of her harp and his violin.
The sight of him by a window erased the sting of her arrival. Taking a seat at the large concert harp, she placed her hands on the strings, praying the instrument was in tune. It wasn’t. Her fingers plucked a discordant note before falling to her lap. Everything else had been a disaster since dawn. Why would this be any different?
