Lori Benton (49 page)

She straightened from the rubble, stopping herself in time from wiping more soot on Goodenough’s petticoat. Instead she strode toward the slope behind where the cabin had stood and bent to clean her hands in the browning grass.

As she did so, something near the tree line caught her eye. She climbed to it and, in utter disbelief, bent to pick up Neil MacGregor’s Bible.

A few paces into the trees, half-buried in last year’s leaves, lay her musket. She stood there, caught in wonder and bewilderment, until it came into her mind that Matthew must have brought them out of the fire, only to lose them in the chaos of that night.

Willa sat on the grass with her heart swelling within her, laid the musket beside her, and held the Bible across her knees. Some of its pages were rippled from the damp, its cover spotted with scorch marks, but it could be saved—not like poor
Pamela
, too long abandoned on the islet in the lake. She couldn’t bear to open it, however, and see the tiny words written in the margins of so many of its pages, or those on the slips of paper scattered throughout. Not yet. They would be for later, for many laters to come, to remember the man she might have spent her life loving.

She held the Bible to her nose, cherishing the weight of it, the smell of
the leather, and thought with a bleakness that her life thus far amounted to a trail of small things pulled from ashes: keepsakes brought on journeys, miraculous survivors of tragedy.

Or now, things not so small. She had Matthew and Maggie. She had her children. Willa closed her eyes, half-formed prayers for Neil flitting through her mind. Prayers for herself and the children she would do her best to raise. Prayers for Joseph.

She drew her knees up, letting the Bible slide down her thighs into her lap, and rested her head on folded arms. Her bottom was getting cold. Damp. She was thinking how the children would tease her when they saw it, but that wasn’t what made her lift her head sharply and look for them. It was the collie’s barking and the sound of horses coming up the track.

It was habit to check the musket’s powder, though after lying in the woods, what was left in the pan would be useless. Still she came out to meet whoever approached with musket gripped in one hand, Bible in the other.

Escorted by the frisking collie, the horsemen had reached the yard. There were three of them. One was Elias Waring.

Relief flooded Willa. Hot on its heels came concern. The Colonel had only risen from his bed yesterday, for Richard’s burial. He shouldn’t have ridden all this way, and it amazed her that Goodenough allowed it. And the man riding beside him … She squinted, casting back in her mind to that day on the road above the mill, with the Colonel’s mule, and Richard come with that man to assess her land.

It was the same man. Wendell Stoltz, the assessor who’d come in the spring at Richard’s fetching. Was that what this was about? Were they come to forcibly remove her? Then who—?

The third rider had been fishing inside his coat, as if to assure himself something put there was safely there still. His head was bent, an unfamiliar, broad-brimmed hat blocking his face. Now he raised his head.

She barely registered Maggie sliding down from behind his saddle or
Matthew from behind the Colonel’s. The children ran to her, chattering. The collie circled them, barking. Willa stood like a woman chiseled out of oak, unable to move or speak, seeing nothing beyond Neil MacGregor, who had dismounted and stood now with his horse’s reins in hand, staring at her as he had that day inside the mill, as if nothing else in the world was worth his notice.

Time did a strange thing then. It tangled and twisted, looping back on itself like a cord tied in knots. She didn’t remember Neil closing the distance between them. Of a sudden he stood before her, drinking her in with great swallows as though he’d thirsted long for the sight of her. Then he was talking about her land, and her father, about Albany and—

“You have been to Albany?” She cut into his tumbling words, her voice harsh in its abruptness. It made his eyes widen. She’d forgotten how beautiful they were, bluer than the bits of sky showing now in breaks between gray clouds. She’d forgotten how pleasing was the shape of his mouth that had smiled at her so often when she hadn’t deserved a smile.

His mouth wanted to smile now, she could tell, but something cautious in his eyes wouldn’t quite let it. “Aye. To Albany. I went to find Tilda Fruehauf, after I learned her letter to ye was stolen.” He glanced at the Colonel. “I kent ’twas the only way to get at the truth in time, to have it straight from the woman herself.”

“A letter to me? But who …?” She was having trouble taking it in, with her heart beating loud in her ears, and the children tugging at her and asking questions, and the dog letting the world know its happiness at this reunion.

Neil MacGregor raised a hand. “Wheest!” he said to one and all. Though he laughed as he said it, the noise and tugging ceased.

Willa set the musket on the ground, next to it the Bible, then straightened with her eyes on his, determined to understand. “You went to Albany … for me?”

“Of course,” he said, frowning a little. Then the frown went away, and
he said, “Aye, I was forgetting. Gavan never made it to you with my letter. He’s all right, though, on the mend. I’ve seen him. Seems the same hand did us both harm, he and me.”

“I … He …” And then she understood; he spoke of the letter Joseph had only just given her. She pressed a hand to the place where the missive was tucked into her bodice and began quietly to cry. It did not make half the sense it probably should, but it didn’t matter. Neil MacGregor was here. Not just his words on a paper or in his Bible, but himself standing in front of her, telling her he left Shiloh not
because
of her, but
for
her.

She wiped a palm across her cheek to stem the tears, then saw the state of her hand. “I am all over soot!” she exclaimed, embarrassed for what she must look like after sifting through the fire’s devastation.

“Willa.” Neil’s voice was thick with feeling. She thought his arm was about to come around her, but he stopped himself. It was then she saw; only one of his arms was inside a coat sleeve. The other, the same that was wounded when she found him, hung once again in a sling, snug against his shirt.

“You are hurt?”

“ ’Tis nothing. A bit of trouble on the road back, is all.”

“More than a bit,” said Wendell Stoltz, inserting himself into the conversation. “I found him at a tavern a few miles shy of German Flats, shot through the arm.”

Neil had been waylaid on the road, Stoltz went on to explain, and ridden injured for miles before falling from his horse practically in the tavern yard. After having his arm set and a night’s sleep, Neil—in company by then with Stoltz—had pressed on, determined to reach her.

The children listened to this account with wide-eyed admiration, but a flush had risen from Neil’s neck, and in his eyes was contrition. “I didna ken then what was happening here,” he told her, with a glance at the Colonel.

“But who was it waylaid you? A highwayman?” Willa asked, unable to quell a jolt of fear, belated though it came.

“That’s what I thought at first,” Neil said. “But no. ’Twas Aram Crane shot me. And got away with the deed.”

“Neil …” Though gripped by concern, his name on her tongue was a sweetness she savored. “We were right about Aram Crane. He wasn’t what he pretended to be. He …”

But Neil was nodding. He already knew. Of course, the Colonel would have told him all.

“I’m sorry, Willa,” he said. “So sorry about the cabin, but I thank the Almighty Lord with every breath that you’re safe, you and the children. And … Joseph?”

“Gone back to his people,” she said. “I only wish he’d got that man and saved you this hurt.” She reached to touch his bound arm, tenderness for him nearly overpowering, but drew back in uncertainty before her fingers brushed him. “But what is this about Albany? And my mother’s cousin? You have
seen
her?”

“I have,” Neil said, eyes shining.

“It seems,” the Colonel interjected, “your Albany relation is a meticulous hoarder of correspondence.”

Willa drew in her breath. “Papa’s letters?”

The Colonel looked on her dawning comprehension with a pleasure that almost chased the grief of the past days from his face. “Dr. MacGregor has acquired a dozen letters written by your father in the early years of the war, but there’s one of particular significance … if I may?”

The Colonel looked to Neil, who drew a thick bundle of letters from his coat and, seeming to know which was wanted, handed one to the Colonel. Elias Waring scanned the creased, yellowed page while they waited in silence—even the children—then cleared his throat. “This was written by Dieter Obenchain in spring of 1778:

The words transported Willa to her childhood, to evenings on the cabin porch with mending in her lap and a novel tucked half out of sight, to snatches of half-heard conversation flying above her head while she stitched and stole glances at the more absorbing world between the book’s pages.

It was a moment before Willa realized the Colonel had stopped reading. Looking into the faces of the three men waiting for her to speak, she saw in them the satisfaction they had been suppressing all this while. “And this is unmitigated proof?”

Stoltz chuckled at the recollection of his words. “It means,” he said,
“there will be no auction of your land, not with such proof of your father’s loyalties to the Patriot cause. I matched your father’s signature to that on the land deed, and earlier this morning Colonel Waring—myself and Dr. MacGregor witnessing—made over the deed to the sole surviving heir of Dieter Obenchain.”

They meant her, Willa realized.
She
was the sole surviving heir. The land wouldn’t be auctioned. It was hers.

Stoltz rounded up the letters and handed them to her. Willa wiped her shaking hands on her skirt—forgetting it wasn’t her own—and held them as she would a fragile glass. The letter on top was streaked and spotted with brownish stains.

She raised her eyes to Neil, whose mouth tilted in apology. “I bled a bit on them. Sorry.”

Dear man
. She wanted to throw her arms around him, to tell him she loved him, that she had been a fool, that she never wanted him to go away again. But all she could say was, “Oh …”

If she was speechless, Matthew Kershaw wasn’t.

“We don’t have to leave?” he asked, looking from face to face for confirmation.

“We don’t have to leave,” Willa echoed, but for her it wasn’t a question. She simply needed to hear the words spoken to make them finally, irrevocably, real.

“Not unless you wish to.” Neil stepped close and finally—oh, finally—touched her. His hand cupped her shoulder, then, as if he couldn’t help himself, her face. “I’m sorry, Willa, for all you faced alone. I didna want to leave ye, but there was no time to be lost.”

Lost. Willa closed her eyes, caught between all she had lost and all she had gained, and the fact of this man now standing there touching her. “Cabins can be rebuilt. Crops planted again. But this …” Opening her eyes, she raised the letters. “None of that could happen without this.”

Something in the way Neil was touching her must have communicated
to the Colonel and Stoltz, even the children, for when Willa glanced around again, the assessor was showing Matthew something out of his saddlebag, the collie trailing after them, and the Colonel had taken Maggie’s hand and the two were walking toward the horse shed, which had survived the fire.

She and Neil stood alone in the yard, his hand warm against her cheek. She wanted to keep looking into his eyes forever but lowered hers in shame.

“Willa.” Neil took his hand from her face, leaving her wishing for its warmth. “I thought you’d determined to be alone, to give your heart to no one. You made that clear enough to me. But the children … they tell me they’ve proposed to adopt ye.”

She risked a glance at his face, saw in his eyes the mingling of amusement, warmth, and aching question.

“Is it just their notion,” he went on, “or did you accept their proposal?”

She swallowed and said, “I sent Joseph away without them. They are my children. I accepted.”

Both happiness and hurt crossed his eyes, much as it had Joseph’s. She knew he was remembering his proposal by the spring, after the first crop fire. The one she had spurned.

“I accepted,” she said again. “But I made them ask me twice.”

Neil searched her face, dark brows drawn, and she saw he didn’t yet understand.

“You have only asked me once.”

She was looking into his eyes the moment hope dealt his hurt a stunning blow. Then it came, the smile that made her heart melt.

“Wilhelmina Obenchain, as I stand here breathing, you’re the most headstrong, stubborn-minded—”