Blue Moon (24 page)

Payson frowned. “But Noah can defend himself. How she thought Lankanal could best him, I’ll never know.”

“I’m sure Livvie didn’t want Noah put to the test.”

“But she knew
I
was wanting. Even Molly knows that I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a rifle. Livvie knew that, too. She must have sincerely doubted that I could protect myself from Lankanal. But I could have warned Ern about him, I could have gotten help, if only I had known about him. I could have asked the neighbors to stand with me. I could have been ready for him, if I’d only had the nerve to make her tell me the truth.”

“But could you have told anyone in town
why
you needed help against Lankanal? Would you have wanted all of it to come out? I think that you would have wanted to keep Olivia’s past a secret, for her sake.” She stepped away from him, returned to the table and started to pour the hoecake batter into a skillet. She felt him watching her.

He left the open door and crossed the room to be near her.

“Do you really believe it, Susanna? Do you think Noah will bring her back?”

She looked up at him and smiled. “Yes.”

“When he does, I’m taking you all back East. This is a wild place. It’s too hard on all of you. The boys are turning into hellions and you have suffered enough. You deserve the finery you had before you married me, the help, a grand house.” He sighed, looked at his worn hands. “Lord knows, I’m not a farmer. I’m a teacher.”

Susanna reached up to him and smoothed his hair back behind his ear. There were new lines at the corners of his eyes, lines carved by the sun and the wind and endless hours outside. She traced them with her thumbs as she cupped his face.

“We can’t leave here now, Payson. Not now that you have a good crop coming in. We’ve enough put by for the winter and … I’m on my feet again.” She looked out the window toward the treeline, where the small wooden cross stood all alone. “We’ve invested a child into this land, Payson. A baby. Your sweat and blood, too. Our tears. We can’t just walk away now. And you
will
teach again. Did you notice how much the town has grown, just in the year since we first arrived? Soon there will be a church and a school and folks around here will be looking for a teacher.”

Excited by the direction of her thought, a grand new idea came to her right there over the hoecake batter.

“This fall, after the corn is in, why don’t you think about calling on the families closest to us, ask them if they wouldn’t like to send their children over here for lessons a few hours a week? Our own little hellions could certainly use some tutoring.”

She saw a light flare in his eyes that had not been there for a long, long while.

“I don’t deserve you, Susanna.”

“You stood by me when I was locked inside myself. You stayed.” She leaned into him. “I love you for that and so much more.”

“I love you, too, Susanna.”

He looked out the window at his fields and beyond. “Maybe,” he said softly. “Maybe I will teach again. But I can’t even think about anything of the sort until Livvie comes home.”

Shawneetown

Much to Darcy’s intense shame, the local hayseeds lined the main thoroughfare of Shawneetown as Noah and Olivia led him bound at the wrists from the edge of town all the way to Ern Matheson’s Nu Way Dry Goods store. By the time the humiliating little parade reached the front door and they walked into the dark interior, cooler than the bright sunshine, rich with the smell of tobacco, spices, and citrus fruits brought up from the South, the speculative nature of the curious had turned into the surly catcalls of a crowd on the brink of becoming a mob.

“I was beginning to think I was never gonna see the likes of you again,” Ern Matheson said to LeCroix.

Darcy watched the storekeeper reach for LeCroix’s hand and pump it up and down. The man would have started thumping the half-breed on the shoulder if LeCroix had not quickly shrugged him off. Then Matheson noticed the bloodstain on Noah’s shirt and his bandaged shoulder beneath.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Lankanal happened,” Noah told him, nodding at Darcy.

Ern turned toward Darcy, staring at the bonds that held his hands tied together at his wrists. Darcy didn’t even try to straighten and present himself, what with his good clothes torn and filthy, his face looking like a map with purple bruises marking the hills and valleys.

“We brought him back to clear my name, but he says he didn’t kill Betts either,” LeCroix told the peacekeeper.

Ern wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Folks around here are expectin’ a hanging. Where the hell have you been? When you weren’t back in two days’ time I had to tell folks what Susanna Bond told me and how I let you go. Now here you are claiming this man didn’t kill Betts either?”

“I didn’t,” Darcy said. There was no way he wanted to provide the entertainment for the populace of Shawneetown at a hanging.

Ern turned on him. “I suppose Telford Betts shoved that knife into his own heart?”

“No, I did, but—”

“But you didn’t kill him? Betts looked good and dead to me. He didn’t let out a peep when we buried him,” Ern groused. “Hell.” He started to spit on the floor, thought better of it, and swallowed. He looked at Olivia, stared at the front of her torn dress, eyed LeCroix carefully, too, and finally looked back at Darcy.

“I guess you all got a
real
good explanation?”

“Betts was already dead when I stabbed him. He just keeled over.” Darcy thought that the honest-to-God truth sounded lame even to his own ears. Ern Matheson stared back at him in outright disbelief.

Darcy looked at LeCroix. He had tried to tell the half-breed that no one was going to believe him, that they should have let him go back to New Orleans, but LeCroix had needed his own alibi and unfortunately, he was it.

“Yeah, and I can fly like a bird on a good day, too.” Ern was looking at all of them as if they had lost their minds. “Tell me you don’t believe him,” he said to Olivia and her lover.

“Why would he want Betts dead? The man was just a land agent. He’s the one who brought Lankanal here,” the river pilot argued in his defense.

“This man tried to frame you for murder, Noah.”

Darcy decided it was up to him to plead his own case. “The idea didn’t even come to me until after Betts died,” he told Ern. “He had picked up LeCroix’s knife after the fight in the tavern. When I saw that, I figured I’d get LeCroix out of the way once and for all.”

“So you could take the girl?”

Darcy looked at Olivia. “Yeah. So I could have Olivia.”

Over the past couple of days, while he had been traveling back upriver with Olivia and LeCroix, he had slowly become somewhat accustomed to seeing them together. For the most part, they hardly communicated when they were in earshot of him, but he noticed they did not need words. That Olivia loved the half-breed, there was no doubt.

He remembered thinking,
Let her go on and marry the man and have a passel of grubby little candy-faced children
. He had wasted the spring and most of the summer tracking her down. It was time to get over her, to get on with his life—if he could just save himself from a hanging.

Suddenly a middle-aged woman appeared on the stairs that led to the second floor. When she saw the three of them she came flying down the steps, her brown eyes wide behind her spectacles as she began fussing over Olivia.

“Oh, you poor thing, what happened to you?” The woman, whom Darcy took to be none other than Matheson’s wife, pulled Olivia into her embrace and then brushed her tangled hair off her face.

“You come upstairs and let’s get you out of that ruined dress.”

Darcy stared at the floor as Matheson’s wife clucked over the torn bodice. When he looked up again, the peacekeeper’s wife was pinning him with a knowing glare.

“What are you going to do about this, Ern?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Olivia and then Noah LeCroix. “You two look like you could use some decent food and rest.”

Darcy watched her bustle around, collecting some items from the shelves. Matheson’s wife stopped a few inches away from him.

“Is
this
that fancy New Orleans gambler?” Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her dark eyes snapped as she inspected him from head to toe.

“That’s him,” Matheson told her. “Darcy Lankanal.”

“What are you gonna do with him, Ern?” She was eyeing him over her spectacles.

“Put him in the smokehouse, I reckon. Claims he’s not guilty, so we gotta hold off the hangin’ and bring the circuit judge in.”

Darcy closed his eyes, fighting to stay on his feet. He was hurting, hungry, and tired. He wanted a bath and a change of clothes and he wanted to get the hell out of Illinois. He thought of his grand suite in the Palace of Angels, of the beautiful women there who would give anything to sleep with him, pamper him, and cater to his every need. He tried not to imagine how good it would feel to soak his aching bruises and muscles in a deep, warm, scented bath, to slip into a silk dressing gown and light up an expensive cigar. He tried not to think at all, but he was facing impending doom. Suddenly Ern Matheson’s last statement registered.

“You’re putting me in the smokehouse? Like some … some …”

“Ham.” Noah LeCroix stepped up to him and actually smiled. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, Lankanal. You’ll get used to it.”

Chapter 20

Shawneetown

The Mathesons fed them fried catfish and beans, lent them clothes, and promised to keep Darcy Lankanal locked up right and tight in the smokehouse until the circuit judge could be summoned. Ern extracted a promise from Noah that he would appear at the hearing. Insisting she wanted to get back home before another night fell, Olivia easily convinced Noah they should walk the two miles back to the homestead. A tense silence accompanied them. She had no idea what he was thinking, or how long he would stay this time. Certainly he would be here until the hearing was over.

They were almost home, at the last bend in the road, when she suddenly stopped walking and let go of Noah’s hand. A war whoop cut the air, a high shrill sound that had Noah going for his gun and Olivia’s heart racing.

Little Pay and Freddie suddenly appeared beside the trail, scratches on their arms from the low bushes, dirt rubbed into their faces. Each of them had strips of turkey-red cloth tied over one of their eyes, Little Pay’s right, Freddie’s left.

“Thurprithe!” Freddie called out, oblivious to the fact that Noah might have shot them both if he had not hesitated. Little Pay ran up to Olivia and threw his arms around her waist.

“Boy, Livvie, is Daddy ever gonna be glad to see you. He’s been waitin’ by the door and looking out the windows since you left.”

She felt her heart quicken and looked over at Noah. He was frowning as he stared down at the two boys.

“Why are they wearing those rags?”

“Why do you think? They are pretending to be you.”

Noah looked down at the boys a few seconds longer, then went down on one knee. In an unexpected show of affection, Freddie threw his arms around Noah’s neck before the man could get a word out. Noah winced, but did not pull away.

“Be careful of Noah’s shoulder,” she warned them.

“Thankth for bringing Livvie home again, Noah,” the child said softly. “Daddy wath worried, but Ma didn’t doubt for a minute but what you wouldn’t bring our Livvie back.” Freddie’s inflection was so much like Susanna’s that Olivia smiled.

Noah looked uncomfortable with Freddie’s nearness, but then he reached out, touched the swath of red cloth the boy wore, and smiled.

Noah said nothing, but he hauled Freddie up in the crook of his arm on his good side. Little Pay bounced around them, demanding equal attention. When Noah turned to her, she could not read his expression.

“Let’s go, Olivia. Your family is waiting.”

They crossed the cornfield together. She thought the stalks must have grown a foot since they left. So great was her happiness that the sky seemed bluer, the forest around the homestead richer and greener, the cabin warm and welcoming and hardly shabby-looking at all. She knew then she was coming to think of the place as home.

Little Pay ran ahead to announce their return, calling out at the top of his lungs, tripping on clods of rich, dark soil, waving his arms over his head. Freddie was content to walk beside Noah and hold his hand, trying to match the man’s stride.

Payson appeared in the open doorway. Olivia watched her father wave at them, take two steps out the door, and then stop to watch them cross the field.

It was all so reminiscent of her last homecoming, she thought. This time, even though there were no dark secrets left to hide, the future was still uncertain.

When she reached the yard before the cabin, she left Noah and Freddie and walked straight into her father’s embrace.

“Oh, Livvie,” he said, holding her close. “Thank God Noah found you.”

She put her arms around him and patted him gently on the back. Compared to Noah, he was so much smaller that he seemed almost frail. With shattering insight she realized that in many ways she was far stronger than her father ever was or would be. If she had not been tested over the past year, she would never have known how very much she could endure and survive.

Susanna hurried out of the cabin to join them. Molly came to the doorway and stood there watching the exchange. Olivia smiled over her father’s shoulder at the serving girl. Payson finally let her go.

“Livvie, please forgive me. I had to break my promise,” Susanna appeared troubled, sorry she had broken the trust.

“I know,” Olivia said, taking Susanna’s hand. “But since you did it to save Noah, I thank you.” She looked over her shoulder and saw Noah making an effort to converse with Little Pay and Freddie. Her heart stumbled.

“It’s finally over.” Payson shook his head as Susanna moved up beside him.

“Not quite yet.” Olivia hated to darken the mood. “There’s still Darcy’s trial. We had to bring him back to clear Noah’s name. He admits Noah didn’t kill Mr. Betts, but he says that he didn’t either. He claims the man died of heart failure.”

“But Noah’s knife—”

By this time Noah had joined them. The boys flanked him like bookends, hanging on his every word.

“Ern Matheson said that as soon as the circuit judge is located, we’ll be called back to town for the hearing,” Olivia told them.

“Is Noah safe?”

“Darcy’s admitted to stabbing Betts with Noah’s knife. Ern talked to as many folks as he could while we were gone and they know Noah’s reputation. Darcy, on the other hand, is a complete stranger with no alibi. He may be found guilty because there’s no one to vouch for him or his word.”

“What do you think?” Payson asked her.

“Although he used the man’s death to frame Noah, we don’t think he killed Betts,” she said.

“There’s nothing we can do until we get word from Ern, so right now, why don’t we all go in and have something to eat? Come, Noah, come join us at our table again.” Payson called out to Molly. “How about helping dish up some of those beans and hamhocks for everybody?”

Molly lingered in the open doorway. “Where is Mr. Lankanal now?”

“Ern put him in the smokehouse,” Noah said.

“I’m sure it’s an experience he’ll never forget,” Olivia added, thinking of the quality of the accommodations Darcy was used to.

“The beans, Molly,” Susanna reminded the girl gently.

“Get the beans. Milk the cow. Ye’d think that’s all a body had to do around here was work.” After Molly grumbled her way back inside, the rest of them followed.

Noah’s frustration mounted as the afternoon came and went. Everyone wanted Olivia’s attention, from Susanna, who was more lively than Noah had ever seen her, to the little boys who alternately wanted to play with him or were begging Olivia to tell them a story. Payson, relieved and happy to have his family together again, took a book down from one of the shelves and sat in a corner, content to read. He looked up occasionally and watched them all. Even Molly would not leave Olivia alone. She begged to hear the story of the harrowing trip downriver, asking about every detail.

Restless and bored, Noah began to wonder if Olivia was hiding behind her family’s attention. He needed to talk to her alone, to speak of all the things in his heart, but there was no time. As the afternoon and evening wore on, he was plagued with the ache in his wounded shoulder. Finally, after they had eaten a light evening meal of corn bread and milk, during which he hardly took his gaze off her, he concluded that Olivia was purposely avoiding him. He stood up at the table and announced he was going back to his old campsite to spend the night.

At that, Olivia quickly looked up, but he still could not read the expression on her face. Was it disappointment or worry? The boys sat on each side of her, watching him intently.

“Can we sleep out there with you, Noah?” Little Pay asked.

“We’ll be real, real quiet,” Freddie added.

Noah shook his head, looked directly at Olivia. “What I need is some sleep.”

A look passed between Susanna and Payson, and they suddenly stood up. Olivia’s father went back to the rocking chair as Susanna silently began helping Molly clear the dishes.

Olivia’s gaze shot to the loft where she, Molly, and the boys slept, already crowded together. Then she met his gaze for the longest time since they had entered the cabin.

He thought for a moment she was about to say something, but she fell silent, quickly casting her eyes down at her hands where they rested on the tabletop.

“Olivia?”

She shook her head, a nearly imperceptible movement. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said.

All day he had been trying to marshal the courage to ask her to marry him and go back to Heron Pond. Seeing her with her family again gave him doubt, but he held on to his hope. He wanted her to step outside with him so that he might see what she was thinking and feeling, but obviously she did not want to be alone with him tonight. If he did propose, would she turn him down again?

His shoulder ached, he was dirty and tired, and he wanted nothing more than to wash up at the creek, put his head down and sleep. His own indecision was making him crazy. His patience finally snapped.

“Have a good night then, Olivia.” It was said more harshly than he had intended. He stood up, bid everyone else good-night, and walked out of the cabin without looking back.

Olivia waited until everyone was asleep, then took her moccasins out of the trunk, slipped them over her bare feet, and climbed down out of the loft. Without making a sound, she left the house. The moon was not yet up, but the darkness no longer frightened her.

Across the field she hurried, then quickly walked along the woodland path. She halted at the edge of the clearing around his lean-to. The fire had reduced itself to glowing embers and white ash within a ring of stones.

She crept closer, gliding across the grass. Noah slept on his side, his wounded shoulder up, his back to the clearing. When she reached the low lean-to, she knelt down, tempted to reach for him, to touch his hair. She longed to lie down beside him, to be there to watch the sun come up, to see him awaken, to smile at his surprise when he found her there, but a few stolen moments was all she would allow herself.

She saw that he had bathed in the pool. His long straight hair was still wet where it lay against his cheek, covering his scar. Ern had given him a shirt to replace what was left of the one torn during the fight, the same shirt whose hem Noah had ripped off to make new headbands. His new brown calico shirt was unbuttoned down the front, revealing his smooth, hard chest. She longed to lay her palm against his bare skin, to feel his heart beating beneath her touch.

She added some wood to the fire to keep away the predators that roamed the woods; then, as carefully as she could, she lowered herself to the grass beside him. He was so exhausted that he did not even stir. She decided to stay and keep watch while he slept, for this might be one of the last times she was alone with him.

As she stared down at the sleeping man, she thought of the many times he had offered her his love and protection, of the way she had hurt him, the times she turned him away. He was a strong man, a proud one, too. He would not ask again.

She sat beside him late into the night, alternately dozing and then listening to the sounds of the fire crackling in the fire ring, the hoot of an owl perched high in the tree above them. She sat beside him until the first stars began to fade. Then with a touch as light as a butterfly flitting across a summer meadow, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cheek. Stiff from sitting on the grass, she finally stood up and left him to finish his dreams alone.

Darcy was escorted to the trial in chains, chains that Ern Matheson had to borrow from the local blacksmith. The heavy, oily iron rattled and clanked as he was marched to the tavern instead of the courthouse, which had been damaged in the spring floods. No liquor would be sold this morning while the place served as a courtroom. The tables had been rearranged; one had been set up apart from the others for the circuit court judge.

Chairs were lined up in uneven rows, the extra tables stacked in the back of the room. The windows were all open but the air was hot, muggy, and still. The place still held the fetid smell of a tavern, reeking of whiskey and ale, tobacco and unwashed men.

When they left him standing just inside the doorway with a guard, Darcy slowly perused the room. There was no comparing it to the Palace of Angels with its crystal chandeliers, imported carpets, gilt-framed mirrors, and silk wall coverings. He only hoped to God that he would live to see the Palace again.

In a matter of seconds, Ern Matheson was back at his side. The yokel peacekeeper was puffed up with importance, smiling and nodding as folks streamed through the door. The man had even donned a clean shirt for the occasion, which gave Darcy pause. The townsfolk all seemed to be taking his trial very seriously. Probably nothing else of such import had happened here in years.

“Come on, Lankanal.” Ern took his arm, letting him set his own pace because the heavy chains tangled and dragged from his waist, down his legs to the shackles at his ankles. He pulled out a chair behind a table and motioned Darcy to sit.

Before he did, Darcy scanned the room. The Bonds and the half-breed had not yet arrived. He felt a moment of fear when he thought that they might not come. He tried to shove his panic aside. LeCroix and Olivia were the only ones who could testify on his behalf, and they owed him nothing. She hated him. He saw that with the clarity of a man who had just spent hours alone chained up in a dark smokehouse ruminating over his own past. He had gone mad for a while, lost his mind over a woman who certainly was lovely, but wasn’t worth losing everything it had taken both him and his mother a lifetime to build.

He should have toasted Olivia the day she escaped the Palace, found himself another virgin, and forgotten Miss Bond had ever existed. But if there was one thing he knew for certain now, the view back is far clearer than the road ahead.

The room was filling up fast with townsfolk, men and women both. Some of the women held squirming children. Others even brought along older ones with them. Everyone was curious, probably just as eager to see him hang. Raising his head, he slowly looked around the room, staring back at the crowd, giving them what they wanted—a chance to look at an accused killer. Some turned away quickly; others stared back unabashedly. A woman in the front row shivered when he met her gaze. She blanched and closed her eyes. When he thought she might faint, he smiled at her.