Judith E French (10 page)

“Robert Wescott.”

Father James stepped back to the foot of the bed. He was a tall, slender man, and his head nearly touched the overhead beams. “You are certain you wish to do this?”

Brandon knelt beside Leah’s bed and lifted her hand to his cheek again. “Yes, I do.” It would be the last gift he could give her, the only gift he had ever given her. She would have his name, and for a brief time this Shawnee Indian woman would be Lady Brandon. My wife, he thought, my true wife. Perhaps it would make a link between them that death could not break. “Quickly, before it’s too late. Say the words, priest. Make her my wife before man and God.”

“Do you, Robert Wescott, take this woman . . .”

 

Father James prepared to leave Adam’s Crossing at noon the following day. Leah was still alive, but her breathing had become fainter, her skin paler. “I would stay for the burial, Lord Brandon,” the priest said as he swung up onto his horse, “but I have other duties. I fear she—Lady Brandon,” he corrected, “has slipped into a coma. I’ve seen dying men and women do so often, but I’ve never seen one recover after. A coma may last hours or days, and I fear I have no time to wait with you.”

Brandon nodded. “It’s not necessary. Thank you for coming. You will be rewarded once I can contact my father’s steward in Annapolis.”

“God bless you.”

Brandon dismissed him with a nod and turned back to the tavern. His eyes were burning, and he felt light-headed. He’d spent the night sitting up with Leah; his only sleep had been when he’d drifted off for short naps. He’d swallowed a half bowl of something gray and sticky at midmorning. He wasn’t certain if it had been porridge or stew. Certainly, there’d been nothing in the taste or lack of it to give him a hint.

The old woman, Anna, was coming out of the door to Leah’s room. She looked up at Brandon dully and shook her head.

An icy chill passed up his spine. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Brandon asked.

“Nope. No change.” Anna pursed her full lips, and her lined cheeks puffed out. “Maybe the best thing might be t’ try and get the lead out o’ her back.” Her faded blue eyes regarded him shrewdly. “Ain’t dead yet. Maybe it ain’t her time t’ go. Folks dies in God’s time, not man’s.”

“If the physician—”

“If ye don’t mind me saying so, sir, I tole ye thet he wouldn’t come.” She rubbed her work-worn hands against her threadbare apron. “Ain’t never come t’ Adam’s Crossing before and ain’t gonna start soon. Didn’t come when Will’s Trudie died birthin’ twins, and didn’t come when I had to cut off Jacob Tilman’s leg what got crushed under a log. Physicians ride in fine carriages—they don’t mess around in the backwoods where Injuns is likely t’ lift their scalps.”

“Will you do it?” Brandon took hold of her arm. “Will you get the bullet out?”

“Nope.” Anna shook her head. “I tole ye thet when thet slug comes loose, she’s like t’ bleed t’ death. I ain’t gonna have folks say thet Anna Carey killed no lord’s woman. She’s yer wife, Lord Brandon. It’s fer ye t’ do the honors. If she dies on ye, folks won’t think nothin’ o’ it. Mary Hopkins doctored her man when the cow stove in his chest. He died, but nobody pointed a finger at her. Didn’t stop her from getting a new husband a month later. No, it ain’t fer the likes o’ me. Ye must do it.”

Sweat broke out on Brandon’s forehead. “I don’t know anything about surgery.” By the bones of Saint Paul, the nearest he’d ever come to medicine was when they dug a nail out of his father’s bay mare’s hoof on the London highway. He raised knotted fists and rubbed at his aching eye sockets. “Reason tells me to wait for the physician,” he admitted.

“And Judgment Day,” Anna replied. “Ye ain’t in England, m’lord. Ye be in Adam’s Crossin’. Ye can try t’ help or let yer woman die. What will it be?”

He drew in a shuddering breath and let his hands fall to his side. “Will you help me?”

Anna sighed. “Aye, ’spose I gotta. But the harm’s on yore head, does she bleed t’ death. Don’t do nothin’ on my say-so.”

“Would you do it if she was your child?”

Anna considered a moment, then nodded. “Yep, I would. Can’t do no harm, and might do some good. Layin’ like thet, she ain’t hardly alive noways. Ye do the deed, and I’ll stand behind ye and tell ye what ye need t’ know. And I’ll mix a bread and milk poultice t’ draw the poison out, does she live through the operation.”

 

Because the light was so poor inside the tavern, they carried a scarred trestle table out into the muddy yard, covered it with a linen sheet, and laid Leah facedown on it. Anna bound Leah’s wrists and ankles with strips of cloth and tied her down. “If she be lucky, she won’t feel nothin’, but sometimes the pain gives them the strength o’ a bull. Does she fight the knife, ’twill be hard t’ hold her down.”

Brandon pulled off his borrowed shirt and washed his hands with the strong soap until his skin stung from the lye. He held a knife blade in the fire until the steel glowed red, then carried it carefully to the table. Anna pulled the blanket down to expose the terrible wound in Leah’s shoulder.

“Use yer finger instead o’ the knife,” Anna instructed. “Ye’ll do less damage thet way. Ye only use the knife point if ye can’t get the musket ball out.”

Two other women and four men had gathered under the porch roof with their children to watch the operation. The rain had changed to a light mist; the air was cool and damp. Brandon glanced up at the onlookers, noting that John Sawyer was among them, and swore softly under his breath.

“Better offer prayers than curses,” Anna said. She held a basin of warm water and rags to staunch the blood. “Get on with it, m’lord. Longer ye wait, quicker she’ll draw her last breath.”

Brandon leaned down and kissed Leah’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “so sorry.” She lay like a waxen image, her breathing so shallow he couldn’t detect the slightest movement. “Mary help us both.” With shaking hands, he undid the bandage and took a hard look at the entrance wound. It was swollen and red with only a faint trickle of blood.

Gently, he dilated the opening with his fingers and began to probe for the lead ball. Leah screamed and struggled against the ties. Tears filled Brandon’s eyes as he pressed her down against the table with one hand and extracted the bullet with the other. Leah moaned and went limp as blood began to seep from the hole.

Anna crowded close to see. “Let it bleed,” she advised. “There’s evil in the wound which must come out or she’ll die slow and screamin’.”

Brandon waited for what seemed an eternity before the old woman handed him a saucer. He raised his eyes to meet her faded ones.

“Pack the lint into the wound,” she instructed. “’Tis soaked in oil t’ let the poison get out. If she lives until nightfall, I’ll replace it with a bread and milk poultice.” She waved to the men on the porch. “Some o’ you give his lordship a hand gettin’ her back inside afore she catches an ague.”

“No!” Brandon insisted. He unfastened the ties and gathered Leah into his arms. “Keep your hands off her. No one shall touch her but me.” Already the linen pad was soaked with red. In God’s name, he wondered, how much blood could she lose and still live?

Anna bustled beside him as he walked toward the tavern. “I’ll boil up some willowbark tea. If we can get her t’ swallow it, it’ll help with the fever.”

Brandon paused and looked into Anna’s plain face. “Fever . . . Leah has no fever.”

“Ah, but the fever will come, sir. It always do.”

 

L
eah opened her eyes and stared at the maple tree branch through the glass window. The leaves were bright orange-gold, and she didn’t know why. Troubled, she let her heavy eyelids drift shut again and tried to think clearly. Her head hurt, and her throat was dry and scratchy. The mat beneath her aching body was soft, as soft as duck down, and her body was clothed from neck to ankles in a strange garment.

In the darkness, it was easy to slip into sleep; she had done it so many times. If she slept, the panther that gnawed at her body was driven back, and she didn’t have to try and think where she was or what had happened to her. There had been dreams, confused and frightening . . . so many dreams that it was impossible to tell dream from reality. Most of all, there had been pain and the fire that burned her flesh until she felt as light as an autumn leaf.

Autumn . . . The leaves had turned. They were beginning to drop from the maple tree, so it must be autumn. Where had she lost the days and nights? She shivered. If the leaves had changed from green to gold, she had lost several weeks.

In the darkness behind her closed eyes she heard voices speaking English. She was certain she’d heard them before . . . Sometimes she thought she recognized Brandon’s voice. He wasn’t here now. The speakers were both women, one very young, and they were close enough to touch.

“Look at ’er layin’ there,” the young one said. “It ain’t natural, I say. She oughta be dead.”

“Shhh, none of that talk now. You’ll be out on your ear if his lordship hears you.”

“No disrespect t’ Lord Brandon, ma’am, but ye heard the doctor wi’ your own ears. ‘Unexplainable,’ he said. It ain’t natural, an’ it ain’t right. ’Spose she’s a witch?”

“Hold your tongue, Jane,” the older woman said. “There’ll be no talk of witches and such as long as I’m housekeeper here. It’s an act of God, not Satan. This is a God-fearing household. They may believe such claptrap in Boston, but not here.”

“It don’t make sense t’ me, his lordship so handsome and all. Why would he take the likes o’ her t’ wife? She’s an Injun, ain’t she?”

“Jane, I’m warning you!”

“Yes’m, Miz Briggs, I’ll mind my tongue. But ye don’t like it neither. I see ye watchin’ her from the corner of yer eye. Ye’re scared o’ her, too.”

“My feelings are none of your concern. I mind my own . . .”

Their footsteps receded, and the older woman’s words became fainter until Leah could hear them no more. Leah was alone again. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

She was in an English house. She had guessed as much when she’d seen the glass window. She’d never seen one before, but her father had told her that most houses in his land had them. The younger woman had mentioned Brandon’s name. Was she in his father’s house?

They’d been arguing, she and Brandon. She remembered that clearly. He’d wanted her to come to his father’s plantation, and she’d refused. Then there had been a shot. She remembered running toward the safety of the trees, and then . . . And then something had hit her in the back, hard. After that, there had been only blackness and dreams.

Brandon had been part of her dreams. He’d held her hand and told her he loved her . . . He’d begged her not to die. Sometimes, in the dreams, he’d rocked her in his arms. Death had tracked her through the dream world and the waking. Leah had felt the hot breath of the shadow demons, but she’d never once believed that she was dead. Those who pass over the river know no pain, and she had never ceased to feel pain. The pain had given her a reality to cling to, an enemy to fight. She had come to respect the pain because without it and without Brandon’s presence, she would have surrendered to the Dark Warrior.

Leah looked around the unfamiliar wigwam. Standing against one wall was a tall, upright chest of polished wood on narrow twisted feet. Along another wall were two more enormous glass windows, and on the third was a fire pit surrounded on three sides by curious red stone. Logs crackled merrily, and the smoke rose straight up to disappear through a hole in the red stone. The logs were held in the fire pit by two small soldiers of iron, and in front of the fire, on the wide plank floor, lay a rug of bright-colored woven cloth.

The sleeping platform that she lay on was high off the floor. It stood free from the wall, supported by four carved posts and covered by a roof of shining red and blue material. The bed was heaped with blankets, all of cloth, very light and warm, sewn with tiny, neat stitches.

Suddenly a shiver of fear ran though her bones. Leah clutched at her throat, then relaxed as her fingers closed around the Eye of Mist. “Father,” she whispered, “help me.” She squeezed her eyes shut, ashamed of her weakness. She was no longer a child to cry out for her father. What if her amulet was as empty as her father’s declarations of love? What if there was no magic in the necklace—if the Eye of Mist was just cold metal, a superstitious tale to soothe an irritable child?

The moment of panic passed as she rubbed the golden charm with her fingertips. She drew in a deep breath and moistened her dry lips with her tongue. A small chuckle rose in her throat; her lips turned up in a faint smile at her foolish doubts. The amulet wasn’t cold—it was never cold—it was warm. It was magic, a magic so powerful that she had been unable to outrun or outwit her fate.

“Why?” she whispered into the empty room. Her cracked voice sounded as harsh as the scrape of bone against bone. “Why did you give it to me, Father?” But she knew as she uttered the words that Cameron Stewart was only following his own fate.

The Eye of Mist has been handed down from mother to daughter in my mother’s family for two thousand years.
Her father had said that, too.

But why? Leah gripped the hem of the fine linen sheet and twisted it in her hand. Why? she agonized. Among the Shawnee, a child took the mother’s clan. I am the daughter of a Shawnee peace woman. Why must I carry a Scottish curse?

The answer came from a small voice of reason in her head, unspoken in words, but as plain as though it had been shouted by a Shawnee orator.
You are only half Shawnee. Your father’s white blood runs hot in your veins, and among his people inheritance comes from the male line. You cannot escape his legacy.

Something wet trickled down her cheek, and Leah touched the drop with her fingertip and brought it to her lips. Salt. Not rain, but tears. She remembered rain on her face, and with the rain had come the worst pain of all. She sighed. That was past now. The panther still gnawed at her shoulder, but the pain was no longer so terrible.

“Suppinquall,”
she murmured. “Only tears.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Tears helped nothing; tears were for children. “The curse has come true. I am far from my own family and friends.” She sighed again, wondering if her sister across the sea had suffered from the power of the curse.

At first, when her father left, she had been jealous of her English sister. She had been angry because Cameron left her and her mother to go back to his other family. But, as the years passed, she realized that if there was fault, it was not her white sister’s, and she had wished they could meet—just once—and share laughter . . . and perhaps tears.

“Do you wear the rest of the amulet, sister?” Leah whispered in English. “Is the Pictish gold warm about your neck?”

“Leah?” Brandon stood in the doorway.

A warm flush spread through her body as she smiled at him. He’d traded his deerskin vest and loincloth for an English coat and velvet breeches the exact blue of his eyes. Black leather boots rose to his knees, and his shirt and stock were as white as the foam at the foot of the falls at the Place of the Maiden’s Kiss.

“Leah, you’re awake!”

She laughed softly and beckoned to him.
“N’nanolhand,”
she said, “I be lazy. The sun is high, and I lie here upon this sleeping platform like an old woman.”

He crossed to the bed in a heartbeat and took her in his arms as tenderly as though she were made of butterfly wings. He murmured her name over and over in his deep voice as he covered her face with kisses. And when she drew back to look into his eyes, she saw that they glistened with unshed tears.

“Aiyee,” she said as she laid her cheek against his. Her heart sang with a joy she had not believed possible. “Brandon mine, it has been a hard trail. Without you, I’d nay be here to cause ye more trouble.” She raised her head, offering her mouth to be kissed. He did not disappoint her, and the kiss was as sweet as wild grape honey.

“They all said you would die.” He tightened his embrace, taking care not to put pressure on her injured shoulder. “You were shot, and I had to dig the musket ball out of your back.”

“Next time, like
p’tuka-nai-thee,
the rabbit, I will remember to dodge as I run.” She snuggled against his blue velvet coat and caught his hand in hers.

“There won’t be a next time. I’ll protect you, Leah, always. You’re my wife now, and no one shall ever harm you again.”

She gazed up at him. “Your wife? I’ve been your wife since I took ye from the stake.”

He kissed her forehead. “I forgot, darling, there’s no way you could know. I remembered that you told me you’d been baptized as a child.”

“Aye, but what has that to—”

“When I thought you would die, I called for a priest to give you the last rites of the Church.” Brandon brushed a stray lock of hair from her face and kissed her on the lips with a feather-light caress. “And I had him marry us again, in a Catholic ceremony. You are my true wife, Leah, in the sight of God and man. You are Lady Brandon now.”

She laughed again, softly. “So I heard the women say, but I thought they were speaking nonsense. It makes no difference to me, Brandon mine.” She yawned. “I be very sleepy.” She closed her eyes. “I have hunger, too, but . . .” She yawned again. “I am as weak as a newborn fawn. First I will sleep, and then—”

“It’s important that you understand, Leah.” Brandon’s tone was insistent. “We are wed. You are my wife, and you will be the mother of my sons.”

“Aye,” she murmured sleepily. “I ken. But I have a son, and . . .” Her breathing became deeper. “I must go back to my own people. Soon . . . very soon . . .” Her lashes fluttered faintly and lay still like dark wings against her cheeks.

“No, Leah, that’s what you must understand. You’re not going back to the Shawnee, not ever. You belong to me now. I’m going to take you to England with me as soon as you’re strong enough to travel. Leah?”

She slept, unable to hear his last words.

 

In midafternoon of the following day, Leah sat cross-legged in the center of her bed and nibbled daintily at a square of cornbread. A mug of milk, untouched, sat on the bedside table beside a bowl of oat porridge. “I dinna like this yellow stuff on the corncake,” she said to Brandon. “What name has it?”

“Butter.”

“Aye, so the house woman said. ‘Will
you
have but-ter or jam on your bread, Lady Brandon?’” Leah giggled and lifted the butter off the top of her cornbread with the handle of her spoon. “I dinna care for
but-ter
or for the white milk of kine.”

Brandon took another square of cornbread and spread it generously with strawberry jam. “Try this.” He placed it on a monogrammed linen napkin and handed it to Leah. “Trust me, this you’ll like.” He removed the plate with her crumbled buttery pieces of cornbread and set it on the table.

Warily, Leah bit into the jam and bread. “Aiyee,” she cried. “It is a marvel, this jam.” She made short work of it and looked at the tray. “I will have more.”

He grinned. “No, you’ll not have more, at least not until supper. Do you know how long it’s been since you’ve eaten solid food? I’ll not have you getting sick on me all over again.”

“You only want me well so that you can try to force me onto a sailing boat,” she exclaimed, lying back against the pillow. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, held away from her face by a deep rose-colored ribbon that matched her rose silk dressing gown. “I told you this morning, I must return to my people. I have much love for thee, Brandon mine, but we canna stay together. I am the flame and you the black gunpowder. Each is good, but bring one too near the other, and there be disaster.”

Brandon frowned. He had told her about their wedding a second time, when she had awakened the night before. They had argued, and they had argued again this morning about her going to England with him.

In the months of his absence, messages of great importance had arrived from Westover, his family’s country estate. He’d missed his father’s first letter by only days. Another Jacobite plot to overthrow King George and put a Stuart heir on the throne had been discovered. A gamekeeper who had worked for Brandon’s father for thirty years had been arrested, along with Miles Chester, a neighbor and good friend of Brandon and his cousin Charles. The gamekeeper had been questioned under torture, and before he died, he’d told the authorities that someone at Westover was in league with the rebels. Miles Chester had escaped and fled the country, and a warrant had been issued for Brandon’s arrest. The letter advised Brandon to make himself scarce while his father tried to prove his innocence.

A second letter from Lord Kentington, dated only two weeks after the first, had actually arrived in Annapolis ahead of the news that Brandon was sought for treason. Once his father had been able to travel to London and confront Brandon’s accusers, he made it clear that Brandon couldn’t have been both in London causing a scandal by seducing Lady Anne and in Dorsetshire, more than a week’s ride away, involved in a treasonous plot. Regardless of what the gamekeeper had confessed, Lady Anne’s husband, no friend to Brandon, was a solid witness for the defense. The charges against Brandon had been dropped.