Choices of the Heart (41 page)

35

She’d lost him. She knew she had. It was why she had insisted she protect her heart against caring for anyone. Except he’d won it with a few words, a few smiles, a lot of music and kindness. And the kiss that told her she wasn’t afraid to be touched by him.

“I’ll leave.” It was all she could do—offer to go before he sent her away.

“Where?” He took her hand in his so gently she wanted to weep. “You can’t go without somewhere in mind.”

“I’ll go to Phoebe and Rafe Docherty. They—they’re as close as I have to relatives in this part of the state.”

And Griff hadn’t asked her to stay.

Run. Run. Run
before you break down and throw yourself into his arms.

She didn’t move. Her feet seemed rooted to the rock of the mountain, with the waterfall constantly refreshing the pool, keeping the water pure. To move meant ripping away a part of her soul and all of her heart.

“Griff, I can’t go.”

“Esther, I don’t want you to go.”

They spoke together. They stared at one another in the starlight, then Griff drew her against him with his arm around her waist and his other hand in her hair, tilting her head back so he could kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. She cradled his face in her hands and continued to kiss him with a fervor she hadn’t known lay within her. She let herself enjoy the moments, letting them last a bit longer than they should have, then she drew away.

“We can just say I left because of the fire,” she said.

“You can’t go. I can’t wake up in the morning and know you won’t be here. I want to wake up with you beside me. I want to marry you.”

“You know you can’t.” She shook her head. “You have had trouble enough with Bethann, and I’ve caused trouble enough already. Having me in the family will hurt your sisters. It’ll hurt the way other men respect you. And they need to for you to make the right decisions for the families and everyone who depends on you for work.”

“Which makes me not much better than that man who hurt you. Giving you up so others will respect my authority over them ’cause I have my own house in order ain’t—isn’t right. You should come first if I love you.”

“I gave up being worthy of that kind of love, Griff.” She turned her back on him and walked away, climbing the rocky slope with care so he wouldn’t come help her, wouldn’t have a reason to touch her.

He caught up with her in a few strides and didn’t touch her. They descended the mountain in silence save for the crunch of their footfalls on the path. In silence they entered the house, where Mrs. Tolliver sat on the kitchen bench sewing and glancing toward the door.

“It’s past time the two of you got back.” She set her needlework aside and rose. “Are you hungry?”

“No, thank you.” Esther kept walking through the kitchen without once looking back at Griff. If she caught a glimpse of his clear blue eyes gazing at her with even a hint of hope in them, she wouldn’t leave.

As she had left her family for their sake, she would leave the Tollivers for theirs, especially for Griff’s. He could marry one of those nice young women with whom he’d danced at the Independence Day celebration. Perhaps one was a Gosnoll and he could ensure peace on the mountain that way.

She climbed the steps and slipped into Liza’s room. The girl slept on the very edge of her bed as though even in sleep she was polite enough to make room for Esther. She readied herself for bed and slipped beneath the quilt, though the night was too warm to need a covering. She wouldn’t sleep. She mustn’t sleep if she was going to leave before the family woke in the morning. But her body sank into the moss-filled mattress as though every fiber sighed in relief at lying down at last, and she drifted into slumber to the soothing murmur of Griff’s and Mrs. Tolliver’s voices below her.

Griff poured himself a cup of water, then leaned against the table, watching Momma slice bread and ham to feed him food he didn’t want to eat. She would start lecturing him at any moment. Whether he was a man grown or not, Momma expected him to behave a certain way, and he had overstepped his bounds as far as she was concerned.

“You don’t keep a nice girl out in the woods past dark,” Momma began. “I done taught you better’n that.”

“Yes’m.”

Except Esther might not be considered a “nice girl” to Momma.

Of course she was. None of what had happened was her fault.

Except it was in a way.

“We brought her here to help teach the young’uns how to go up right like folk in the city,” Momma continued. “The boys can’t stay here. There ain’t enough for them, and they need to know their letters and their manners and—” She turned around, plate of food in hand, and stopped. “What’s wrong, Son?”

Even at age six, he hadn’t laid his head on her shoulder and cried over a wound. He’d borne it like a man did—without a whimper, maybe even with a shrug and a grin. Now he wished he could forget about being strong, about carrying the weight of the family’s fortunes and misfortunes on his shoulders.

“She won’t marry me,” he blurted out past a constricted throat. “I told her I wanted to, and she said no.”

“She don’t love you?” Momma’s face showed surprise. “I was right certain she does.”

“So am I. But she doesn’t think she’s good enough for me. She—” He couldn’t talk. He finished his cup of water, but his throat remained too closed for words.

Momma set the plate on the table, then wrapped her arms around him as she never had when he was a boy and suffered some bump or scrape or childish fever. She expected him to be strong over that.

Apparently a breaking heart demanded something different.

She held him while he told her Esther’s story. She didn’t say a word until he was done, then she moved away and pulled out a chair.

“Sit and eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need food. You haven’t eaten all day.”

Dutifully he took a few mouthfuls, then set down his knife and fork and rested his head in his hands. “How can she think she’s not good enough for me when I have Bethann for a sister? We forgive Bethann for all she’s done, and not once have I heard her say she’s sorry. But I tell Esther I love her, and I hesitate before reassuring her that her past doesn’t matter. It’s no wonder she thinks the Lord has abandoned her. All those people she grew up with abandoned her.”

“Her parents didn’t, did they?”

“No, she left them because she felt she was hurting their work. And that man goes free.”

“You hired Henry Gosnoll to manage the mine,” Momma pointed out.

“I needed someone I trusted to be honest.”

“You trusted the man who ruined your sister to be honest?” Momma shoved back her chair. “It was a decision you and your pa made, so I didn’t contradict, but I saw how it hurt Bethann every time you mentioned his name.”

“And to this day he denies being responsible. His wife denies that he’s responsible, as much as she knows he has a wandering heart and wants him dead.”

And he had to tell Momma that story too. She wept through it for her poor sister’s sake, for her niece’s sake, for the waste of lives.

“If he weren’t guilty,” she asked at the end, “why did he leave the mountain?”

“To protect his hide. I’d have gone too if y’all hadn’t needed me here.”

Momma stared at him. “You would have? You’d have left us?”

“I’ve never wanted this fight. I want my family alive and well and prosperous. I want to be able to pay a preacher to be here all the time. I want a schoolma’am here all the time. I want Esther here all the time as my wife. But how can I convince her that her past don’t—doesn’t matter if she’s determined to think different?”

“Let her go back to her kin.”

“What?”

“You can’t keep her here if she don’t want to.”

A simple and painful truth.

“She won’t let you talk sense into her if she thinks she’s leaving ’cause she loves you too much to stay,” Momma continued. “Let them talk sense into her.”

“Yea, like how it . . . isn’t sensible to love a man from Brooks Ridge.”

“If they can do that, then it’s best she’s gone, now ain’t it?”

Another simple and undeniable truth.

The kitchen, the house, the entire compound of buildings and yard and kitchen garden shrank in on him. He needed air, clear, fresh mountain air, soothing to his soul like the balm he’d spread to soothe Esther’s hands. If only he could find a balm to soothe her soul.

How could she believe she wasn’t good enough to be loved? She was good enough for God to love her.

The answer came to him as he climbed the steepest path on the ridge, slowly enough not to stumble in the moonlight, fast enough to make his breath sear in his lungs and his legs burn with the effort.

She was all mixed up between people loving her no matter what she’d done and God loving her no matter what she’d done. People let a body down. Griff had thought Zach was his friend, and he’d been jealous enough to start a fight. When people abandoned Esther, she confused it with God abandoning her.

He reached the top of the ridge and stood, breathing hard, his hands on his knees. Sweat ran into his eyes, but his mind was clear.

If he let her go without trying to keep her with him, she would think he’d abandoned her too, and she might never get her heart right. One more time he had to convince her she should stay.

He straightened to run down the mountain again and heard a scream. His blood ran cold, and he knew it was a mountain lion a little closer at hand than he liked. Cautiously he started to walk, quieter than running, soft-footed on the carpet of pine needles and last year’s leaves. He drew the knife from the back of his waistband, though a knife was a poor weapon against a big cat.

Another scream proclaimed the beast to be on the hunt on the other side of the ridge, the opposite direction from him. He started to relax, to focus on getting back to Esther as fast as he could.

And then a gun exploded. Another scream followed. Not the eerily human cry of a mountain lion, but unmistakably that of a human female.

Esther woke to the chilling scream of the mountain lion. She lay beside the soundly sleeping Liza, her own body tense save for the occasional shudder running through her. It sounded too real, too much like a woman’s cry of fear or anguish. Her own heart cried out.

The time had come to go. With the big cat in the distance, with the house silent from everyone sleeping, she could slip away. She would take one of the horses. The Tollivers—Griff—would understand. Once she reached Christiansburg, she would send the horse back.

As quietly as she could, she dressed, bundled her things together in her other dress, and caught up her satchel. One step creaked beneath her. She froze, waiting for someone to call out, challenge her. No one did. When she reached the barn without incident, a sense of peace washed over her, as though for once in her life she had made the right choice.

She wasn’t really running away. She was going back. Rafe and Phoebe Docherty would give her shelter and help her find somewhere to go. Yes, they would tell her family, but it was past time they knew. She should never have rejected their love. It was the only anchor she possessed in the world.

You shouldn’t be leaving Griff’s love behind
, a still, quiet voice said inside her head.

“But I don’t have it,” she said aloud. “He let me go without a fight.”

Not that she wanted that fight. Not that he would fight for anything. He was a man of peace, a man who always took the peaceful road. The road with the least resistance.

Suddenly she was glad to be leaving. Outrage like she hadn’t experienced since no one in Seabourne would believe her story against Oglevie ran through her veins. She could have run all the way to Christiansburg with the power of her anger.

But wasn’t she a fool for wanting him to fight for her?

She saddled the mare, tied on her satchel and bundled clothes, and mounted. Riding astride was certainly easier than in a sidesaddle. More secure, better for riding through woods lit only by moonlight.

She knew where to find the track. It led straight to the Tollivers’ front gate, too narrow for a wagon, too rough for speed. Intermittent light broke through the branches like winking stars leading her way. The horse seemed to know it anyway. A docile, sweet creature, she picked her way down the hill—down, down, down until a sparkle of water in the distance proclaimed she had reached the path along the river.