Lori Benton (42 page)

Maggie came out of the cabin, round eyed and grave.

Willa drew them to her, one in each arm. The girl pressed her face into her ribs.

Matthew’s voice was tightly controlled. “I wish Mr. MacGregor was here.”

“So do I,” came his sister’s tremulous reply, half-muffled against Willa’s side. “Is he praying for us?”

“He said he would,” her brother replied.

There was a thickening in Willa’s throat as she hugged the children to her. “He is a man of his word,” she said, sounding choked. “We are not defenseless. God is with us.”

That was what Neil would have said, she was sure. It was what the children needed to hear—what she needed to hear. The words didn’t sound as convincing when they came out of her mouth, but there was no other mouth to say them now.

Please
. It was the first time she’d prayed, even in the quiet of her thoughts, for days. Too many days. But it came now from a raw place, a true place, far down inside her soul.
Please
.

They stood there together for a few seconds more. Then Willa gave the children’s shoulders a squeeze and said, “Let’s check on that pie. It would be a shame to let it burn, hen’en?”

Not until she lay in her bed, full of pie and worry, did it strike Willa: of the two men most concerned with their lives, the man the children had wanted to defend them wasn’t the warrior, Joseph, but the healer, Neil.

As did I
.

The knowledge swelled beneath her ribs, sharp as broken glass, and it was far into the night before she had smashed the shards small enough to draw a calming breath around them.

Francis was pacing the cabin yard when they came in from the field, laden with baskets full of gourds and squash. The collie, last seen sleeping on the porch, slunk behind him like a fretful shadow. Willa quickened her pace, belly twisting with dread.

“Francis … what is wrong?” Francis halted and stammered something unintelligible. Willa set her basket on the porch and told the children, “Take this into the cabin.”

They cast wide looks at Anni’s agitated brother as they climbed the porch steps. When they were inside, Willa did a thing she had never done—grabbed Francis by the arm and gave him a shake.

“Francis! Did Anni send you?”

Stringy blond hair whipped across his shoulders as Francis shook his head, a violent denial that startled Willa into releasing him.

“What is it, then? What is wrong?”

“I meant to s-s-say—” Francis stuttered to a halt, then blurted, “Anni needs you.”

“So she did send you? Is it the baby coming?”

This was odd, even for Francis. First no. Then yes. And now he wouldn’t look at her.

“Francis,” she began impatiently, but stopped herself. Either Anni’s baby was coming and she was needed, or it wasn’t. But what ought to be straightforward for a person to say or do, Francis would come at it roundabout, or not at all.

Willa reached for calm. She was going to have to go to Anni, and see. “It will be all right. You did well to come to me.”

“I did well,” Francis repeated under his breath, but he didn’t look well.
His face was pinched, and he’d gone back to pacing, long skinny fingers all but snapping off like twigs against his leg. “I did well …”

With no time to spare for puzzling him out, she hurried up the cabin steps, only to be met at the door by Maggie, thrusting the carrying basket at her. “We put in everything. All your plant medicines, linen pads, salves. There’s a skin of water. And the leftover corn cakes, in case you get hungry.”

Amazed by the child’s quick thinking, Willa turned and settled the arm straps and tumpline into place while Maggie supported the basket. Then she took the child’s face between her hands, bent, and kissed her cheek. “You are a good girl.”

She drew back, struck to her fast-beating heart by the child’s blazing smile.

“Matthew helped,” she said as her brother appeared behind her.

Willa didn’t stop to consider the dignity the boy strived so hard to protect. She lifted a hand to his head and kissed him too, smelling his sweat-dampened hair and his young boy’s scent. “Look after your sister. Do not leave the cabin, no matter how long I’m gone.”

Francis stood at the foot of the porch steps, darting hunted glances all around as if he expected hungry wolves to come bursting into the clearing. A bruise was coming up on his cheekbone. Willa hadn’t noticed until now. There was no time to ask about it.

“Francis, stay with them. And you both, stay inside—” She turned, admonishing the children once more, and nearly fell across the collie, still milling about. “And keep this dog back!”

Matthew grabbed the dog as she raced for the path to Anni’s cabin.

She was halfway there before it occurred to her to wonder why she’d been sent for when Neil MacGregor was right there in town. Not to mention
Goodenough and Leda MacNab. Maybe Anni simply wanted her there at such a time.
For the sake of our friendship now …

Memory of Anni’s words to her weeks ago warmed her, and she smiled as she trotted along the path, thankful for how Anni had stood by her, even though it had been hard for her to accept all the ways in which her years with the Mohawks had remade her. And now there was to be a new addition to Anni’s family, not born too soon, despite the trial this pregnancy had been for Anni. She ran on smiling through the woods, praying all would be well.

The smile faded as the sound of a moan, low with suffering, met her at the edge of Anni’s yard.

Willa ran full out the final distance to the cabin. Anni was in the back room where the family slept, but a quick glance revealed that aside from her little daughter, she was alone. Samantha, hovering over a kettle at the hearth, pale hair plastered to her scalp with steam, burst into wails when Willa came through the cabin door.

“Miss Willa! Mama’s dying!”

Anni, seeing her from the bed in the adjoining room, struggled to sit up. “I’m not dying, sweet—” A groan stifled the reassurance.

Willa hurried through the cabin, banging her carrying basket on the door frame, nearly staggering into the back room. An old quilt and straw tick had been spread over the bed ropes, the good feather tick and bed coverings stripped off and tossed in a corner. Anni wore a shift, half-drenched with sweat and birth waters.

“Why are you alone, Anni? Where is Charles?”

“There wasn’t time. It’s come on so fast—” Her face went a strained and livid red for a count of heartbeats. Then she went limp into the nest of sweaty pillows at her back. “Maybe I
am
dying …”

Willa slipped off the basket and set it on the floor. She found a rag and a basin half-filled with water and wiped Anni’s gleaming brow. “Do
not say such a thing,” she began, but Anni grasped her hand, squeezing hard.

“This one’s different.” She kept her voice low, but Willa caught the current of panic surging just under the surface. “It hurts more. A lot more.”

So had Willa’s labors been nothing alike. Goes-Singing had taken an agonizing day and night to birth, while Sweet Rain had taken barely half a morning. That was the usual way of it. First births were long. Second births went faster. But not always.

She hid her concern behind a mask of calm and for the second time asked, “Anni, where is Charles?”

Anni moved her head across the pillows. “I was fine this morning. Feeling stronger. Charles had been talking for days about riding down to the ford at West Canada to talk to a cutter about a new stone for the mill. I told him to go on.”

“What about Leda? Goodenough? Has no one sent for them?”

“Sam went for Leda just before you got here. She’s closest.”

Anni’s fingers clamped down on Willa’s again. Willa waited out the seconds before the contraction loosened its hold. “But why has Neil not come to tend you? He’s the physician, after all. Where is he?”

Anni’s eyes blanked. “You don’t know?” She sat up, curling into the next swift pain, hands pressing the sides of her rounded belly. The pains were coming very close together.

“Mama? The water’s boiling.” Samantha hovered in the doorway, wringing her little hands. “What should I do about it?”

“I … have no … idea,” Anni got out between breaths. Willa thought Anni was answering her daughter, until she added, “Dr. MacGregor left Shiloh—days ago.”

Willa pushed herself off the bed and stood. “He’s gone?”

The news, once she’d made of it what sense she could, left her hollowed, adrift, as if her last mooring had been yanked free and she was being swept away from what little in her life had been sure and safe.

Neil had left them again, without even a farewell.

What right had she to expect one? None at all, after all she’d done to push him away. And yet … her efforts to do so had been in vain. She knew it now, knew it clear past denying—as clear as the path he had made to her heart.

Her mouth shaped words, but she barely recognized her voice as she spoke. “Is that why you sent Francis for me?”

Anni blew out a gust of breath. “Sent him? I haven’t seen Francis in days.”

Anni’s eyes cleared briefly of pain, but Willa knew her own had clouded as unease rose to fill her. Something was wrong here—beyond the hollow loss of Neil’s departing. Her thoughts were too scattered, too distracted, to put a name to it, but something did not add up. If Anni had not sent Francis, then why—?

“Why did you have to be such a pigheaded fool, Willa?”

The sharpness of Anni’s voice, as much as her words, struck Willa like a splash of cold water. “What?”

“Dr. MacGregor was a good man, and he loved you.” Anni’s face was screwing up again, not with her words, but another pain coming. “We could all see it. Why couldn’t … you?”

Before Willa could untangle all the words inside her clamoring to get out—
I could see it, of course I could see it, and hear it and feel it too, but I was too afraid to trust it, to put my heart unshielded into his hands and the hands of the Almighty, one more time; and now it is too late
—the drumming of feet sounded on the cabin porch.

“Mama! Miss Leda can’t come. Mr. Gavan’s leg took bad, and she’s taken him in a wagon down to German Flats. Mr. Keegan told me.”

Anni moaned. “Oh, I forgot about poor Gavan.”

So had Willa. Richard had told her. He hadn’t told her about Neil leaving.

But he knew
. She remembered now, his asking her about Neil. What
had it been? Whether she had seen him lately? Had word from him? Had he been fishing to see if she knew he’d left?

She ought to have followed her first instinct and gone to Leda right away. Now she felt ashamed that she’d stayed on her farm in fear. Was any decision she’d made since the spring
not
founded on fear?

“It’s all right, Sam.” Anni reached from the bed, trying to comfort her children, trying to catch her breath.

Willa shoved aside the condemnation bearing down on her, knowing it would be there waiting when she had time for indulging in regret, and took Anni’s small son by the shoulder.

“Sam, you must run again. This time go to Colonel Waring’s for Goodenough. Tell her to bring you on a horse, because the baby is coming fast. Go now.”

The boy groaned, but went, and Willa was left with her thoughts in a spin. Neil MacGregor had left Shiloh. She would have to tell the children when Anni’s childbed was past. She would have to look into their faces and explain it to them.

The children
.

She had chased concern for Anni all the way from her cabin, but now that she was here, concern flew straight back along that path and hovered now with Francis, who had lied to her, and the children she’d left him to watch over.

“I will stay with you, Anni, until Goodenough comes. Then I must go.”

It was late in the season for deer flies. Were it not for one determined specimen convinced that his blood would make a fitting supper, Neil MacGregor would have called it a perfect day: warm enough with the sun in his face to ride in shirtsleeves, the air clear beneath a sky patched with clouds like billowing sails. Trees along the river’s north bank wore autumn’s first scarlet, and the near-to-setting sun bathed the whole of the Mohawk Valley in gold.

Still it was the news he carried across the pommel of his saddle, tucked in the breast of his shed coat, that buoyed him so he hardly noticed the accumulated aches of his swift journey to Albany.

Though he’d still some miles to go before he’d reach German Flats, near the mouth of West Canada Creek, he decided to press on; a full moon was rising, promising light. By next nightfall, God willing, he’d be riding into Willa’s cabin yard. Guiding the roan past another of the rock outcrops that dotted the river’s bank, he thought the Almighty would be willing, having thus far blessed his hasty venture beyond all Neil could have asked.

A dozen times he’d imagined handing Willa the packet of letters Dieter Obenchain had written during the war. Would she thank him? Or would she be riled at his taking liberty with her affairs after she’d so firmly set him at arm’s length?