Lori Benton (5 page)

He’d surmised by the absence of saddlebags that Willa’s search had proved fruitless. Or nearly so. Beside his meager breakfast, he’d found his three-cornered hat of black felt and his tin cup, along with an item that hadn’t been among his belongings. A book—or what had been a book. With its cover and pages pasted into a solid mass, by excessive water damage he guessed, its identity was as much a mystery as its origins. Though had the book been new with the smell of printer’s ink ripe on its pages, its identity would still have eluded him.

Neil raised a hand to the scar on his brow. Blinding headaches weren’t the only brain-scrambling affliction the events attending that particular wound had left him to suffer. He closed his eyes briefly, refusing the self-pity that sought to fill him at the reminder that the written word was barred to him. He had learned to manage. Harder to shake was this new blow—the loss of his horse and supplies, and the crushing weight of the choice now facing him. Not really a choice, just a matter of when he’d bring himself to admit the inevitable. He’d learned to function with a damaged brain, but what was he meant to accomplish without the tools of his trade? Paint with a twig and his own life’s blood?

If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things
.

Neil took a deep breath, reminding himself to count the blessings and leave off the questioning. The Almighty hadn’t forsaken him. His fall into the laurels, his horse going astray—those events hadn’t gone unnoticed. Indeed, they’d been allowed to happen.

So, then. He was thankful for the kindness of strangers … and their rickety privies.

Visible from the present privy, the twin ruts of a track led off through a scrim of leafing trees to the west. The track passed through a swath of cleared ground before disappearing into deep woods. Leading, he presumed, to the settlement called Shiloh.

Was that where Willa Obenchain had gone? And Cap with her? He hadn’t seen his dog since yesterday either.

“Turncoat,” he muttered, but with amusement rather than annoyance. No surprise if the collie had latched onto the woman as the more engaging prospect at present.

Or had it been the other way around?

For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder if
she
had taken his horse, and now his dog, and gone off and left him here. He supposed he would suspect it, if it weren’t for the fact that her belongings, such as they were, were still in the cabin. Including the goat. Still, he realized he had no real reason to trust her … save what his gut—or mayhap his spirit—was telling him. That she did not mean him ill.

He rubbed his bristled jaw, wishing for a shave. No chance of it, not with his razor bouncing about the wilderness in the saddlebag of a riderless horse. Resigning himself to being temporarily bearded, he started for the cabin.

The crack and crash of a large body moving through the nearby brush brought him up short.

Deer? But the tumult was loud even for a deer. Did moose range that far south? He’d yet to see
Alces americanus
, save in the pages of other naturalists’ work.

His breath quickened as, nearer the cabin, a screen of witch-hobble set to thrashing. The foliage parted. Through it stumbled not moose or deer or ungulate of any sort, but a woman. And not Willa. This woman was shorter and better fed—though she appeared to be of an age with his enigmatic hostess. Freeing herself from the brush, she shook out her petticoats, tucked up a stray blond curl and straightened her cap, then sprinted to the porch, hidden from his view from behind the cabin.

He heard her calling, “Is it you? Are you here? Willa!”

Neil rounded the cabin’s porch as the woman stepped outside again. She halted at the sight of him, wide eyed and pink cheeked.

“You aren’t Willa,” she said with disappointment so acute Neil laughed.

“Sorry, no. But I expect she’s about the place.”

“Is she?” The woman took a step toward him. Her eyes were a light, clear blue, fixed on him in hope. “Willa Obenchain? It’s just we thought … It was understood she … But who are
you
?”

“Anni?”

Neither of them had noticed Willa’s approach. She stood at the head of the track, gripping a long-handled spade, musket slung at her back.

“It can’t be,” the blond woman whispered. Despite the professed disbelief, she leaped from the porch and crossed the cabin yard to halt before Willa, who topped her by neck and head. “Let me see your eyes.”

She cupped one of Willa’s sharp-boned cheeks and turned her face to the morning sun, then with a glad cry threw her arms around Willa’s long waist. “I barely recognize the rest of you, but I’d know those eyes anywhere!”

If she’d been the taller of the two instead of the stouter, Neil was certain the woman would have hoisted Willa off her feet and spun her around.

Over her shoulder, Willa was smiling. Not at him, Neil knew, but the effect was the same. In the dimness of the cabin, he had thought her striking, if a bit intimidating. Now, with her stern features softened by joy, she radiated a beauty that stole his breath.

“Anni,” she said through that dazzling smile, “my heart is glad to see you, but you are breaking my ribs.”

“Oh!” The woman released Willa, her face going pink. “Don’t know my own strength, Charles says. But, you! Who’d have thought you’d shoot up like a cornstalk? Makes me feel positively
dumpy
. But never mind … I didn’t know what to make of it when Francis showed up at our cabin this morning saying he’d seen you here—always lurking, our Francis—but he said nothing about …”

She turned abruptly, as if recalling Neil. “Willa, is this Scotsman with the bonny blue eyes your husband?”

Willa’s radiance dimmed, taking the softness with it. “I have no husband. He … I …”

Neil took the matter in hand, coming forward to bow awkwardly with his pinioned arm. “Neil MacGregor, ma’am. I took a fall yesterday morn, and my horse, giving me up for dead, absconded with nigh all my earthly goods. Miss Obenchain brought me along here with her, like the stray that I am. Me and …” But the other member of his expedition had yet to reappear.

Willa pointed toward the ridgeline. “Chasing breakfast. Squirrel, I think.”

“Ach, well. And you, ma’am?” Neil inquired of the blond woman. “A friend of Miss Obenchain’s, are ye?”

“I am,” the woman said, and dropped into a curtsy. “Anni—Annaliese Waring Keppler.”

“Keppler?” Willa echoed.

Anni’s smile brightened. “You remember Charles. His father ran the mill—Charles has it now. He asked the Colonel for my hand six years ago, and now we’ve Samuel and Samantha. Twins—heaven help me.”

A shadow passed across Willa’s eyes, though her mouth pulled into another smile. “I am happy for you, Anni.” She raised a hand to brush back the hair escaped from her braid.

Her palm was blistered raw.

“What’ve you been about, Willa?” Neil reached for her hand.

She raised the spade as if to ward him off. “I found this—near the upper field. I am using it to break ground for planting.”

It was a wide blade, solid and sharp. No cast-off tool left to rust. “You found it there? Abandoned? By whom, I wonder?”

“I do not know.”

“I might.” Anni Keppler had an unguarded face—soft and round cheeked. Now her expression shifted from wry amusement to discomfort. “And, Willa, I hate to have to say this so soon, but someone has to give you fair warning.”

Bewilderment stared from Willa’s eyes. “Warning?”

It was then Neil caught a drumming sound, faint in the distance, and glanced toward the track. It sounded like a horse’s hooves, but he saw nothing.

“We never supposed you would come back,” Anni was saying, distracting him from the noise. “Not that I’m not over the moon that you have … but after all these years, and since your parents—”

“Where are my parents, Anni?” Willa broke in. “Where is Oma?”

Anni’s expression twisted with sympathy and deepening unease. “I’m sorry, Willa. Your parents were suspected Tories—Loyalists to the British. Richard was certain of it before the end, and you know he—”

The approach of hoofbeats, unmistakable now, silenced Anni.

At last Neil glimpsed a horse through the trees bordering the yard. A large bay, raw boned and white blazed, brought its rider into view, a man in a good blue coat, wide shouldered and very tall in the saddle. His clothing and bearing were that of a gentleman, but he was hatless. Fair hair unbound on his shoulders lent him a disconcertingly wild appearance. His face bore a coarser echo of Anni Keppler’s features, only there was no softness there.

The man pulled the bay up short in front of them, yanking it in a series of tight turns, making it snort and prance. Ignoring Neil and Anni, the man’s pale eyes blazed at Willa Obenchain, whose face drained of color as she mouthed a name.
Richard
.

Anni stepped between them, reaching for the horse’s bridle. The man shifted his searing gaze to her. “I caught Francis skulking in the woods west of town. He left the twins on their own.”

Anni held her ground. “Who minds them now?”

“Goodenough came into town with me. I sent her to mind them. As you ought to have done.”

“And Francis?”

“Locked in the smokehouse with the rest of the game.”

Anni grimaced. “Richard, Francis isn’t an
animal
.”

“Wasted fretting, Anni. He’ll get himself loose within the hour and will be haring off to the hills. But I didn’t come to talk of our brother.” His gaze snapped back to Willa. “It’s her?”

“She can speak, Richard. And can’t you see her eyes?”

From atop the tall bay, the man’s gaze raked Willa from beaded moccasins to braided hair. “So. What name did they give you?”

Neil comprehended neither the question nor the resentment behind it.

Anni apparently grasped both. “Richard—Alan—Waring! There’s a time and a place.” She started to move protectively toward Willa, who warded her off with a look.

Standing straight and unshrinking under Richard Waring’s glare, Willa spoke a word in a language Neil didn’t know, though the sound of it struck a chord of familiarity.

It struck more than that in Anni’s brother. Loathing rippled over his face. “Burning Sky?”

The skin across Willa’s cheekbones tightened until the bones stood stark beneath. “You speak
Kanien’keha
?”

“More than I ever wanted to.” Waring swung from the saddle with smooth, athletic grace—an impressive feat, given he had to be a full four inches over six feet, and thickly muscled with it. “What was the name of the buck they mated you with?”

The blood left Neil’s face in a rush of visceral outrage, followed swiftly by comprehension. How ridiculously slow he’d been to grasp the truth when he’d been staring it eye to eye since yesterday—the carrying basket, the clothing, even the faint accent with which she spoke, an accent he’d last heard moments before the scar on his forehead was put there.

Willa Obenchain had been an Indian captive.

He knew of the practice, of course, how the tribes took captives to replace those lost through battle or disease, but he’d thought Willa just another refugee, dressed more rustic than most, returning to her frontier home like so many others from some place of shelter back east. But those few women he’d seen on the roads had come with wagons, stock, goods, and families. Not alone.

Willa had lifted her chin, unflinching before Anni’s brother. “What need have you to know his name?”

Neil saw the twitch of Waring’s big hand, the threat of violence in his eyes. With no conscious memory of moving, he found himself beside Willa, startled despite the tense situation that she stood nearly equal to his own six foot height.

Waring didn’t so much as blink to acknowledge him, but the violence Neil had glimpsed in his eyes receded, replaced by anger, and pain. “What need? I meant you to be
my
wife, not despoiled by some red savage.”

“You may have meant her to be your wife,” Neil said. “But she isna now, and ye willna offer her further insult while I’m here to prevent it.”

Waring flicked him a glance, taking in his splinted arm. “What have you to do with her—or need I ask?”

“If that’s your manner of inquiring, I’m Neil MacGregor, member of the American Philosophical Society, associate of”—his thoughts raced, coming up with the most notable of his society acquaintances—“Dr. Benjamin Franklin, commissioned to compile a field guide of the flora north of the Mohawk River. Insult
me
all ye like, Mr. Waring, but I canna stand by while ye cast aspersions against Miss Obenchain, who’s been naught to me but kindness itself.”

Waring smiled at him, a full smile with an unexpected charm. “Can you not?” he inquired mildly, before he rammed his fist into Neil’s gut. “Then by all means—sit.”

It doubled Neil like a hammer blow, driving out his breath. He
dropped to his knees, pain spiking up his injured arm as instinctively he tried to catch himself. A gray curtain dropped around him. At its margin was movement. Moccasins took a stride forward, stopping in a spurt of dust beside large boots.

Willa’s voice sliced through the curtain like a blade. “This man has taken shelter under my roof. You will not touch him again.”

Silence stretched while Neil fought for breath and the blood rushed loud in his ears. At last a deeper reply came, laden with disgust. “Not today.”

The boots stepped away. Saddle leather creaked. Neil’s lungs remembered how to work. He pulled in a desperate breath as Waring’s parting shot issued from on high, aimed not at him, but Willa.

“You’ve no place here, Burning Sky. Go back where you came from, or
burning
is what you’ll bring down on yourself if you stay.”

She could not stop shaking. Not after Anni led her to the cabin porch, or pried her fingers from the spade’s handle to lean it against a post. Neil MacGregor came up to the cabin and lowered himself gingerly to sit beside her.

Anni stood with tears on her cheeks. “I wish you’d brained Richard over the head with that spade, Willa. It might’ve knocked some sense into him.”

The image of Richard Waring’s face, aged and hardened, hung before Willa’s eyes. She was as rattled by it as if another soul had stolen the face she remembered, a malevolent soul that had distorted its shape with its darkness and wore it now like a mask. She had not recognized the person staring out of Richard’s eyes. She had seen a Long Knife soldier. An enemy.