Choices of the Heart (9 page)

“I’d like to get home,” Hannah said. She drooped in her saddle like a flower left too long in a vase.

Zach frowned, then returned to his waiting horse. “Momma will want to see us. I’ll call soon, find out about the school. Miss Cherrett, I’ll be calling, if I may.”

No, no, not call that
way
, Esther cried inside her head.

She inclined her head. “In a few days. I’ll be occupied with the school right off.”

“Hear that, girls?” Mrs. Tolliver turned toward her daughters. “Hear how pretty she talks? You can learn to talk that way too.”

“Why’d I want to?” The younger girl, possibly thirteen or so, turned down the corners of her wide-lipped mouth. “Ain’t nothing wrong with the way I talk.”

“Except you sound like an ignorant mountain girl, Brenna,” the older sister said. “Kind of like Beth—”

“That’s enough, Liza.” Griff laid his hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Bethann’s got her troubles.” He looked at his mother. “Too many, it looks like.”

“Where is she?” Mrs. Tolliver asked.

“She was right behind me. But there’s—we’ll talk after you get Miss Cherrett settled.” He nodded at Esther. “Momma and the girls will show you your quarters.”

“My . . . quarters?” Esther glanced around the part of the stockade she could see by the lantern light.

To one side stood a barn and a small board structure. The door to the latter stood open, and a rustling and muttered clucking inside suggested hens roosted there. A lot of hens. A half-built house of cedar shakes sprouted on the other side of the fenced area. Oiled paper instead of glass filled in most of the windows. With the children leading the way and Griff drawing up the rear with Esther’s luggage, they swept across the yard, past a flourishing garden and the house under construction.

“You live behind the school,” Mrs. Tolliver said. “You’ll be more comfortable there than in the big house without any windows. We’re hoping the glass comes before winter, but it’s hard to get it up here.”

Esther dropped the hem of her riding habit and stumbled over the excess fabric. “I—I’m living alone?” She glanced around at the house, the barn and coop, the garden, the stockade fence. “I didn’t realize . . . I never . . .”

“I’ll trade with you,” the younger of the two boys piped up.

“No one will trade with her.” Mrs. Tolliver strode to the stoop of another log building. “You can take your meals with us, of course, and we’re only a holler away, but you won’t have no privacy in the house yet.”

“She means you can’t be in a room on the same floor as Griff,” Brenna added. “Even if she does want him to marry you.”

“She doesn’t even know her.” Liza’s tone dripped with scorn. She sidled up beside Esther and whispered, “She don’t—doesn’t have any manners.”

Esther smiled and whispered back, “They rarely do at that age.”

Liza giggled. “Do you have a younger sister?”

“No, just know lots of girls that age back—” She stopped before she said
home
.

It wasn’t home. Nothing was home. Especially not the log house the Tollivers showed her. Two rooms presented themselves to her, with one window in each. The windows had glass, true, but the building would be dark even on a sunny day. A fireplace took up most of the wall that joined the two rooms. A fireplace she would have to tend, no doubt, if she could lift logs big enough to fill it. On the bright side, it was a large enough hearth to heat a huge kettle of water, if she could acquire one.

Other than a few benches and a single table and chair, the front room lay empty. The far room, however, held a plain but highly polished wooden bedstead, a rocking chair, and a chest of drawers. A hand-braided rug covered the plank floor, and two quilts decorated the walls.

The quilts, pieced with care into intricate patterns of red, blue, and green, faded and appearing as soft as the finest muslin, made Esther’s eyes burn, then tear. She blinked to get rid of the moisture. One tear fell down her cheek. She brushed it away with the back of her hand and tried to speak. But her throat had closed, and all she could manage was a smile she feared appeared far too wan to express how much those carefully hung quilts meant to her.

“They’re lovely,” she croaked out.

A wave of emptiness washed over her, staggering her. She missed her mother, her father, the grandparents she had never known, and the brothers who had teased her mercilessly.

Suddenly a hand gripped hers, as calloused and broad as a man’s. “You all right, child?”

Esther flicked a glance up at Mrs. Tolliver, then down to the colorful rag rug on the floor. “Yes, thank you. It’s all quite . . . nice. No, b-beautiful.” She swallowed. “Th-thank you.”

“It’s us who thank you for coming out here. Not many was willing.” Mrs. Tolliver patted her shoulder. “I’ll have Griff bring you some hot water so you can have a bath, and someone will come down with your supper and give you any help you need.”

“What kind of help?” Brenna demanded. “Bring her a towel she can mop up her—ouch, Griff, what’d you do that for?”

Esther snapped her head around in time to catch Griff just releasing the end of his youngest sister’s pigtail. He was scowling at her. “Reminding you of your manners. Now git.”

Face sullen, she turned and stalked from the room.

“I’ll go see she does her chores,” Liza said and followed at a trot.

Griff and his mother exchanged a glance, then he turned back to Esther. “Liza can sleep out in the other room if you’re afraid of being alone out here.”

“You needn’t be,” Mrs. Tolliver answered. “We close up the stockade at night to keep the animals safe, and there’s a lock on this door.”

Esther opened her mouth to say she would like that, then realized Liza would have to sleep on the floor in that barren chamber instead of her bed in a room possibly as lovingly set up as this one. More so.

“No, thank you. I’ll manage quite well, thank you.” She smiled at Mrs. Tolliver, then Griff.

The former nodded and tucked a stray tendril of hair into Esther’s chignon as her own mother might have done—without thinking, a reflexive motion of tender care.

Griff said nothing. He didn’t smile. He did catch her eye and hold her gaze for far longer than was necessary. Than was polite. Then he spun on his heel and strode from the room, from the building, with a speed suggesting he wanted to place as much distance between them as he could, but not because he disliked her as Bethann and now Brenna did. On the contrary. She had read the expression in his eyes and understood it, as she had experienced it herself.

His lingering gaze held the longing for something he knew he couldn’t have—her.

8

Zach hated leaving Esther with the Tollivers. They would take good care of her and had more space for her to live comfortably, but Griff would see her morning, noon, and night, whereas Zach would need to find excuses to call on his cousins in order to see her.

“She’s been in our company for more than three weeks,” Zach mused aloud. “Kinda feel like we left her behind or something.”

“She’s not for the likes of you anyway.” Hannah yawned. “I think it was a mistake to bring her.”

Zach stared at her through the starlit path farther up the ridge to their holding—land better for grazing than farming, but even better for logging, and now just a wee corner for mining precious lead.

“She fixed up your hand right well. How can you say we shouldn’t have brought her?”

“Because she fixed up my hand right well. And she went to see why Bethann is so sickly.” Hannah half turned in her saddle, leather creaking. “Zach, don’t you find something odd about that, her knowing so much about herbs and having them with her?”

“No. Lots of womenfolk do.”

“Up here where there aren’t any doctors, yea, but not in the east.”

Zach shrugged. “Be glad she does.”

“Sure, but why wouldn’t she say so when she wrote about the position? Why would she need to be teaching if her daddy is a preacher and all? I mean, her clothes are fine and that satchel of hers, all her baggage, is fine.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see?” Hannah’s tone held impatience. “She’s not poor. She don’t need to earn her living.”

“Maybe she just wants to.” He grinned. “Or maybe she’s looking for a husband.”

Hannah snorted. “Up here? Females who look like her marry city men with diamond rings and such-like.”

Queasiness gripped Zach’s stomach. He feared his sister was right. Females who looked and talked like Esther Cherrett and came from the kind of family she did didn’t go to the mountains for work or husbands. Yet Miss Esther Cherrett, with her English father and American mother living in a quiet fishing village on the eastern shore, had answered an advertisement for a schoolma’am there in the Virginia mountains.

Not for the first time, he questioned her honesty. She might be telling them the truth about most things. She was certainly good enough for the work they wanted from her—to teach the youngsters good English and reading and writing so they could be more than men and women trying to eke a living out of the unforgiving rock of these hills. But Esther was too pretty, too comfortably off, too confident in herself, to truly belong amidst the mountain folk. She was more like those people who had come to ask questions and watch them, write in little books, then go away and print things they thought were true, like they were writing about some new breed of animal. And she was a bit old to not be wed, especially as pretty as she was.

Despite his doubts, Zach’s heart twisted with the very image of her flashing through his mind. The sound of her voice made him quivery inside. He’d never felt that way before about any of the girls on the ridge, but he should leave Miss Esther to Griff.

Except Griff got everything—the talent, the charm, the ability to make even Zach’s brother-in-law do what he wanted him to do.

Zach should seek a bride from the girls on the mountain. Some of them were just as pretty. Well, almost. They knew what they needed to about living without markets and dry goods stores close by—preserving meats and vegetables, weaving, stitchery. They could cook whatever they had and make do however necessary to keep a family alive in the lean times. Many were sweet, and some could sing like the angels must. They’d been tossing their caps for him since he was sixteen. He’d even courted a few from time to time. It had never come to anything when he thought about living with them the rest of his life, but he could change that.

Or he could try his luck at winning Miss Esther over Griff.

“You want to court her, don’t you?” Hannah said as though she could read his thoughts.

She probably could.

Zach didn’t answer.

“What if Griff wants to?” Hannah pressed.

“’Course he does. Didn’t you see how he was lookin’ at her?”

“Thought so. And what if he decides you did stab him? Bethann says she has proof.”

“It ain’t—” He stopped. He needed to stop saying that. Esther never said
ain’t
. “It isn’t good enough for Griff to believe I’d harm him.”

“He might with Bethann poisoning him against us.” They rode into the light from a lantern hung on the family stockade gate in time to show Hannah’s face twist with bitterness.

She despised Bethann, and with good reason. Hannah’s husband had courted Bethann first, back when the older woman was younger and prettier, her face not twisted up with her own bitterness and maybe guilt. But the Brookses were more prosperous then with the ferry, so Gosnoll dishonored Bethann and started a feud.

“Henry married you, Hannah,” Zach said gently.

“But I haven’t given him children. If he could, he’d unmarry me for that.” She slid from her horse with a thud and yanked open the gate. “We’re home.”

Momma, the two younger children, and Pa raced from the house with joyous cries of welcome.

Henry Gosnoll, Hannah’s husband, didn’t appear.

“When did Brenna get so hateful?” Griff asked Momma as they tramped back to the main house, the kitchen, the tank of water always kept filled and hot behind the stove. “She’s as miserable as—” He didn’t supply the name. No need. They both knew to whom he referred.

Momma’s shoulders slumped, and she suddenly looked all of her fifty-one years and more. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Ever since you left, she’s gotten ornery, disrespectful. I tried to get your pa to speak to her, but he says she’s a female and all females are ornery at that age.”

“Liza wasn’t.” Griff opened the door for Momma.

“Liza is an angel. Never gave me a lick of trouble.” Momma entered the kitchen and picked up two buckets. “Take these to Miss Cherrett. She’ll be wanting a bath, no doubt.”

“I’d rather not.” Griff kept his gaze fixed on the far side of the room, where Pa had gotten shelves fixed to the wall in the past few weeks. “Those’ll look right fine when they’re finished. Is Pa feeling all right then to do that much work?”

“He’s been well, but I make him go to bed early and get his rest.” Momma thrust the buckets at Griff. “You take these, young man. That’s an order.”

“It’s not a good idea, Momma.” Griff took the buckets, then set them beside the stove before wandering to the shelves. “His back ain’t hurting him none?”

“Isn’t. Gotta stop saying
ain’t
. And no, his back hasn’t been too bad. Good enough for him to get after you if you don’t do what I say, even if you are a man grown.”

“I can’t see her.” Griff ran his hand along a smoothly planed shelf. Pa had been shot in the early days of the feuding. By whom, no one was sure. The wound hadn’t been bad, but the impact had knocked him off a cliff and sent him tumbling thirty feet to land in some trees. Those branches broke his fall and saved his life, but his back hadn’t been the same since. The eldest Tolliver son had died that same day.

If Griff hadn’t been old enough to take over the farm then at sixteen, the family would have starved. They hadn’t prospered until they realized the land to one end of the ridge, partly shared with the Brooks family, bore more lead than any of the families on the mountain could use for their own need—for the rifle bullets they’d been making themselves for decades to keep meat on their tables when the land failed to produce enough crops for survival.