by Lori Benton
Ian described the shop, which his da said sounded the perfect fit. “It does,” Ian agreed. “Yet I don’t know that it is.”
“What’s perfect to do with it?” Ned asked, emerging from the back. “Who of us can be so choosy?”
Ian had spoken to his brother since Ned stormed from the house the day of his arrival—as no doubt had their da—but the tension between them had yet to pass. He kept his calm and said, “I’ve more futures to consider than mine and Mandy’s.”
Ned’s face darkened. “D’ye mean to drag Seona along to wherever ye strike out for next? Or does she get a choice this time?”
“Your brother means to do right by Seona and Gabriel,” Robert Cameron told his eldest. “And by your uncle’s former slaves. Why should—?”
The bell jangled as a half-drenched customer entered. Outside, the rain was abating. Ian put a hand to his da’s arm. “I’ll go. See ye at supper.”
With a dismissive scowl, Ned went back to whatever work he had left. Ian turned to go, nodding to the customer who had entered, but his da stopped him, saying softly, “Ned had a letter today too. From Penny. I dinna ken what it says.”
Clearly nothing to comfort his brother’s heart.
The parcel from John Reynold lay on the table in the keeping room, in a patch of feeble window light. Seona had contrived one reason and another to pause and ponder it since Catriona put it there for when Ian returned from his rambles.
John and Cecily Reynold’s firstborn was the only baby she had ever midwifed without her mama by. She and Ian had found Cecily in her cabin, too far along in childbed to run for Lily. Ian had stayed to help, letting Seona boss him with nary a complaint, never balking at a task however menial or discomfiting. That was the day she knew she felt something different for him than she had for any other man. Something terrifyingly deep.
“There you are,” Catriona said behind her. “Thinking about North Carolina? The Reynolds? Or my brother?”
Breaking off her thoughts quick as snapping beans, Seona put her back to the parcel. “All three, I reckon.”
“At least Ian’s in there somewhere.” Catriona took her by both hands, fixing her with a smile that glowed in the keeping room’s gloom. Catriona was looking smart. Her gown was high-waisted, its amber sash a compliment to the red-brown curls arranged in bunches on either side of her head.
“No man’s perfect, you know. I hope you can forgive Ian his trespasses and love him again. How I’d joy in calling you my sister in truth. Who knows? We could have a double wedding!”
Seona’s mouth fell open. “It’s not about forgiving,” she managed. “Ian’s not ready to be thinking of marrying again. And what do you mean by—?”
She had meant to say double wedding, but Catriona dropped her hands, trying to look sober and failing. “Oh, he’s thinking about it—or wants to be. I see how he looks at you.”
“He just buried his wife.”
“But not his heart. And he loved you first. Don’t you still love him?”
“Stop this talk,” Seona all but hissed. Miss Margaret and Naomi were in the kitchen swapping recipes. Malcolm was likely within earshot.
Catriona’s tone turned pleading. “Don’t you see? You and Gabriel, Ian and Mandy, you make a family. Or you could. One might argue should.”
“Catriona . . .”
“It’s meant to be, Seona. Why can’t anyone but me see that?” Catriona tried to say more but burst into tears.
Abovestairs so did Gabriel. Seconds later Mandy’s wail rose in harmony. Seona felt their pull but hesitated, troubled by Catriona’s odd swing of mood. “What’s got you so upset?”
Catriona brushed away her tears. “Nothing. I’m tired. I think I’ll lie down until supper.”
“You’re sure?”
At another screech from abovestairs, Catriona winced. “You best go.”
She found the children on the rug, gowned in their loose frocks with bare legs splayed, painted blocks spilled around them. Gabriel was red-faced and angry. Mandy bereft. Both little mouths were wide, going full bore. Lily crouched before them, holding a block. The red one, Gabriel’s favorite.
“Mama? What did he do?”
“They were playing nice,” Lily said, clearly bewildered. “I was getting a bit of sewing done. Then Mandy snatched up the red block right as Gabriel reached for it. I thought he’d raise a fuss, so I took it from her. That’s when his screeching started. Here, baby.”
Lily gave the block to her crying grandson. Tears still tracking his cheeks, Gabriel thrust it at Mandy, who ceased her crying and took it. Peace was restored. Both women stared.
“He wanted her to have it,” Seona said, stating the obvious.
“But he’s jealous of that block,” Lily said.
“To say the least.” It could be hard to pry it from his clutching fingers of late, even long enough to feed him. “You don’t think he remembers . . . ?”
Lily rose to return to her sewing. “He couldn’t. They were babies.”
“They act like they’ve never been parted.”
Gabriel, three months older than his half sister, was always on the move, often rough in his play. All boy. But as Seona settled on the floor with the children, she realized he had been different since Mandy arrived. Willing to play more gently. Giving her his favorite block. Mandy was all smiles now, though Seona sensed she wouldn’t fuss if Gabriel took back his red block. She had cried because he cried. A thing her mama might have done.
Tears stung Seona’s eyes for the girl who had been her playmate until Miss Lucinda put a stop to it. Can you see this, Judith? Our babies look like they’re becoming friends.
Only to be parted again? Though she hadn’t heard him say it, Seona sensed Ian wasn’t happy being back in Boston, aside from seeing Gabriel. Much of that had to do with Ned. And with her?
“Ye cannot avoid talking to their daddy forever, girl-baby,” her mama said, glancing up from her stitching. “Talking about a thing won’t set it in stone. But the man’s got a decision to make and a heap of futures resting on it. He needs to know what ye’re thinking. What ye want.”
“I know,” Seona said. “But, Mama, I don’t know. I’d just about got my mind wrapped around you, me, and Gabriel striking off on our own. Then he shows up.”
Lily’s needle paused. “It’s not just us now. Unless that’s still what ye want and what Ian wants.”
Seona watched the children stacking blocks on the floor, building something only they could name. What Ian wants. Exactly what she feared finding out.
Ian came in before supper. Passing by the keeping room, Seona saw him slip into his coat something small that had come inside the parcel from John Reynold. Ned didn’t join them, though Seona heard Mister Robert saying he had asked him to. At supper she heard all the news from Carolina. Charlie Spencer was living in the old overseer cabin now. Mr. Allen, a neighbor who lost his wife in childbirth, had married again. They were planting cotton over at Chesterfield. No more tobacco. Then Miss Margaret asked to know about a shop in a place called Braintree, one Ian was thinking of buying.
Seona listened to his answer with a keen ear, pretending to be absorbed in watching Naomi spoon bread pudding into Mandy’s mouth, or Lily feeding Gabriel, or Catriona picking at her food and eating precious little of it. She felt Ian’s glance as he spoke but did not meet his gaze. He didn’t sound like a man who had found what he was looking for.
“Ally?” Miss Margaret asked when Ian finished his account. “What did ye think of Braintree?”
Spoon paused midway to his mouth, Ally said, “Folk there worked up about who gonna be president next. Mister Ian thought it made me mind the man with the dead horse, him that asked Mister Ian to come live with him.”
Around the table silence fell. To judge by their blank expressions, Seona wasn’t the only one trying to make sense of that last bit.
“A man wi’ a dead horse?” Miss Margaret asked.
“Ye didna mention that at the shop,�
�� Mister Robert said.
Ian was looking a mite cornered, as if he hadn’t meant to broach the subject. “It wasn’t a thing that happened today, but back on the road, just past Philadelphia.”
Even Catriona perked up as Ian told the tale of being caught out during a worse thunderstorm than the one just passed, coming across a carriage overturned in the mud, owned by one William Cooper.
“I’ve heard the name,” his da said. “A congressman, aye?”
“County judge and land seller too,” Ian said. “Ally and I helped right his carriage, and I loaned him a horse to replace the one he’d lost, just for a mile or two. In thanks, he procured our accommodation for the night. I thought that an end to it, until he made me an offer of land near one of the frontier villages he’s wanting settled.”
“Frontier villages?” Catriona asked. “Where?”
“New York. North and south of the Mohawk River. He’s named one for himself. Cooperstown.”
Consternation gripped his sister’s face. “You aren’t going to accept the offer?”
“I’ve not dismissed the option.”
“What of Gabriel?” his mother asked. “And . . . ?” Casting Seona a look, she bit back whatever else she meant to say.
“You cannot remove to New York,” Catriona blurted. “You mustn’t leave us, Ian. Not again!”
“Daughter,” Mister Robert said. “Ian will do as he thinks best for all who concern him. Ye dinna top that list, aye?”
Without asking leave, Catriona pushed back her chair and hurried from the keeping room. They heard her footsteps on the stairs.
“What’s got into my wee miss of late?” Miss Margaret asked. “Can anyone tell me that?”
Only Ally bothered answering. “Don’t know, Miss Margaret.”
Soon as Ian’s mother started clearing the table, Seona got up to help, then stayed in the scullery to start the washing up—a chore she and Catriona usually shared—with the door to the yard open at her back for light. The rain had stopped.
Ian found her there, as she had half expected he would. He leaned against the doorframe, hands at his sides.
“Can we talk?”
When she nodded, he entered the scullery and took up a rag, started drying what she rinsed.
“Where’s Mandy?” she asked.
“With her brother in your room. Naomi’s with them.”
She listened for Miss Margaret or her mama beyond the scullery but didn’t hear them.
Ian set a plate atop the stack on a bench nearby. “Aside from those moments on the stairs, this is the first we’ve been alone since I came back. Have ye been avoiding me?”
He must know she had been. What he really meant to ask was why. She dipped her hands into the bucket for another plate. “I wasn’t ready to talk, you showing up, no warning.”
“I should have written.”
“Mm-hm.” She handed him the scrubbed plate. “So . . . all that New York talk. You aiming to settle there instead of Braintree?”
“Maybe.” He held the dripping plate, blue eyes searching hers. “I meant to tell ye of Cooper’s offer, talk it over with ye.”
From out on the lane came the lowing of a cow being brought in from the Common. The air held aromas of other suppers in nearby homes. Of smoke, sea salt, tar, and a dozen other smells.
“When?”
“Now?” Amusement tilted his mouth. Seona couldn’t help smiling in return. Nor the flipping of her belly as she remembered kissing that mouth. “I haven’t decided,” he went on. “New York’s an option, as I said.”
“It sounds good.”
A light leapt to his gaze. “Does it?”
“If farming’s what you want to do.” She plunged her hands back into the bucket, coming up with a pewter cup.
He put down the plate. “Seona.”
She let the cup slide back into the water and turned to meet his gaze, thinking how he looked older, more careworn, but even more handsome than she minded . . . so good that something in her wanted to rush toward him like a giddy stream, forgetting it wasn’t like before. Her heart leapt about with a painful eagerness, just imagining. She caught an answering warmth in his gaze, flashing briefly before caution checked it like a wall rising. That stream rushing out of her surged against it, nowhere to go.
“I hardly know what to say to ye,” he said. “What to think. What to . . .”
Feel? she wanted to ask but dared not.
“I’m trying to do what’s best.” He took her by the shoulders, hands warm through her summer muslin. “For ye and Gabriel—Lily too—and Mandy, Malcolm, Naomi, Ally. But I need to know what it is ye want.”
A scuff of boots stopping short in the stone-paved door-yard was all the warning they got that Ned Cameron had shown up at last.
“Seona. Are ye all right?”
Ian stepped back from her, fixing his brother with a look both startled and annoyed. “We’re talking, is all, Ned.”
“Ye’d your hands on her,” Ned countered. “What right have ye to touch her? By what right are ye here at all? As if ye deserved her—or Gabriel.”
“Leave my son out of this,” Ian said.
“The son ye sent away?”
“Ye know why I had to do that.”
“Aye,” Ned agreed. “It’s one disgrace after another with ye. First ye make a botch of your indenture, then who knows what ye got up to out west before ye were dragged back half-dead. Then Da gives ye another chance to make something of yourself and what do ye do with it? Ye go off to North Carolina, flaunt yourself among Uncle Hugh’s slaves, and bring his house down—literally—atop him!”
Ian flinched. Seona felt her belly cramp at the sickening thread of truth woven through the accusations—made the more gut-churning for the villainous role in which Ned cast Ian, as though he had intended to wrong everyone his life touched.
“Why couldn’t ye stay away, Ian? Leave us all in peace to get on with things?”
The brothers were nose to nose now, of a height though Ned outweighed Ian by two stone. Ian didn’t shrink from his brother as he said, “Peace, Ned? That’s what ye had going here, with Penny away to her parents? Maybe ye should get your own house in order before judging mine.”
The rage in Ned’s eyes had Seona whirling for the kitchen, her only thought fetching Mister Robert to put a stop to this. But Ian’s daddy was already hurrying through the keeping room toward the conflict in the scullery—not only raised voices but now the scuffle of blows: a grunt, a crash, water spilling over stone.
“I hear them,” Mister Robert said, rushing past.
Seona saw Catriona and Miss Margaret coming too before she followed Ian’s father, who leapt over tumbled plates and cutlery and rushed out through the scullery door, where Ned and Ian grappled in the muddy yard. With his hat fallen to the ground, Ned got a fistful of Ian’s shirt in one hand and with the other struck him in the face.
“Edward!” Mister Robert thundered. When he would have lunged for Ned, Ian, who had staggered but not fallen, caught his father by the arm.
“No, Da. Let it go. It’s all right.”
“All right?” Ned backed away, hair come half-untailed to straggle on his shoulders. “Seems it always is for him—landing on his feet like a cat. Back in your good graces after all he’s done, whereas I’ve been here all this while working with ye, year after year, and losing no matter what I do. My sons. My wife. My home—” His voice broke as his face contorted.
“Oh, Ned.” Margaret Cameron pushed past Seona, out into the yard. “Ye’ve no’ lost Penny, surely. She needs time to mend her heart, is all. But your home? What d’ye mean by that?”
Ned wagged his head, desperation in his eyes. “Ye don’t ken, Mam—Da’s kept it from ye, how bad things are. It was more than just supplies lost, that whole Shelby debacle. I invested in one of his trade schemes and it failed. It’s my own fault for trusting the man. All I can think to do is sell my home—the home I’ve tried to coax my wife back to for months. Maybe
better I do. Go live with her in Deerfield, if she’ll have me. Maybe it’s the only way to get her back.”
“Ned,” Ian began, but his brother’s forbidding glare silenced him.
Mister Robert moved next. He took his eldest son in his arms and held him, stiff and resisting at first. Then Ned appeared to melt. A sob broke from him as he shook. When Mister Robert started speaking, his voice was low, but Seona heard his words: Ned needn’t leave Boston; he and Penny were welcome to live at Beachum Lane; the house would be his one day, the business besides; didn’t he know that?
“What’s left of it,” Ned muttered, stepping back from his father’s embrace. “I’m sorry, Da. I’ll go.”
He swept his hat off the ground and left without another word, gone around the side of the house leading to the street.
There was silence as Ian stood rubbing his jaw. Miss Margaret went to Mister Robert and cried on his shoulder. Seona hadn’t heard a peep out of Catriona, even with this talk of Mr. Shelby. She looked, but Catriona was gone into the house. Ian’s parents followed, murmuring of their troubles.
Seona went as far as the scullery, stared at the mess on the stones, then started picking up plates and cups. Pewter. Nothing broken.
“Let me help,” Ian said, beside her again. “I’m sorry for this.”
“Easier to clean up plates than words.” Or memories. She faced him, wanting to turn his chin to the fading light, be sure he was all right. “I’m sorry he hit you.”
Behind clouds the sun had set. Twilight pooled in the scullery. Across the yard one of Miss Margaret’s chickens made a scuffle in the henhouse, then settled.
She couldn’t read Ian’s gaze.
“I’ve still all my teeth—and most of my wits,” he said, trying to make light, but Seona’s heart felt heavy as the wash bucket that together they hefted off the flagstones and set to rights.
11
Malcolm had gone out after breakfast next morning to do the weeding for Ian’s mam. Just now he was having a standing rest, gripping the hoe’s handle, face shaded by the battered straw hat he had worn for years. Spying him from the scullery, Ian paused to gather his thoughts. He had left Seona on that spot last night, frustrated by his inability to say what he needed to. Alone in the study with his da he’d had less difficulty.
