The last thing Jenny remembered—or had she only dreamed it?—was the taste of Harris’s kiss. It lingered in her mouth, when she finally regained consciousness, hours later.
She did not waken all at once, but rose to full awareness by stages, as if climbing from a deep pit. Her body felt chilled to the very marrow, and by times an uncontrollable palsy shook her. Yet, in some vague way, Jenny knew she was no longer in the water. She lay wrapped in a strange cocoon that was soft and warm. She breathed air faintly pungent of sheep and new-mown hay. She heard the muted but familiar sounds of farm life—the splash of wash water, cows lowing in the distance, the chink of crockery, voices old and young.
How many hours she had lain here Jenny could not guess. She might have been content to lie for several more, her mind drifting drowsily. Except for the thought of Harris.
Through the long, cold night he’d held her, standing like a guardian angel between her and death. Long after she’d been willing to surrender, he had fought for her. She was certain Harris would have grappled for her soul with the devil himself. Now he was gone, and Jenny ached for him.
Her eyelids felt heavier than a pair of overflowing milk pails, but she managed to lift them open. At first she squinted against the bright daylight, but gradually her eyes grew accustomed to it and she was able to take in her surroundings. She found herself lying on a pile of straw in a small structure of roughly hewn wood. Sandwiched between a pair of crude blankets pieced from raw fleeces, Jenny suddenly realized that she was mother-naked.
The sound of a stifled giggle drew her gaze to the entry of the shed. The top half of a child’s head peeked around the door, rapidly disappearing again when its eyes met hers.
“Hullo?” Jenny strained to croak the word. Once it erupted from her parched throat, the rest came a little easier. “It’s all right. I’m awake.”
At first her only answer was a hesitant shuffling just outside the doorway. Then the towhead appeared again.
Jenny smiled encouragingly. Since she hadn’t the strength to rise, this child was her only possible source of news about Harris. “Ye can come in,” she called softly. “I don’t bite.”
The giggle burst forth again and soon an entire wee girl materialized. Eyes wide as saucers, she took a cautious step nearer Jenny. “Are ye the lady that drowned?”
The unexpected question made Jenny laugh. Yet tears also sprang to her eyes. “Aye,” she replied. “I came close to it at least. The last I mind, I was still in the water. I don’t ken how I got here or where this is. Can ye tell me?”
The child gave a broad grin, proudly missing a front tooth. She was a skinny little mite—her bare feet, face and forearms deeply tanned from the sun. Showing below her much-mended dress and apron, her calves were crisscrossed with angry red scratches that made Jenny wince.
“This is Richibucto,” the child announced eagerly. “Leastways, it’s Jardine’s Yard. Pa’s boat ran aground last night in the storm.”
“You’re Captain Glendenning’s daughter.” Jenny hesitated over the question that immediately leapt to mind. “Is he…? That is—did he…?”
“Aye, I’m Nellie. Pa’s fine. Just provoked about his boat being wrecked. Everyone else got to shore safely in the lifeboats, but nobody knew what had happened to ye and that man.”
“We fell overboard,” said Jenny. “At least I did.” Harris hadn’t fallen, he’d jumped in after her. “What’s become of the man who was with me?”
Her heart clenched in her chest as she awaited Nellie Glendenning’s reply.
“They took him somewhere else. Jardine’s, maybe.”
“Was he…alive?”
“Aye, but in a bad way, like ye were.”
The tension ebbed from Jenny’s body. If she had survived, surely Harris must have, too.
“Shall I run over and see if he died?” asked Nellie.
Before Jenny could find the courage to answer, a loud whisper hissed from outside the shed. “Come out of there, Nellie. You’ll wake the lass with yer jabbering.”
The child spun around. “I didn’t wake her,” she called. “Her eyes were open and she told me to come in. Ask her for yerself.”
Brisk footsteps drew nearer. Stooping to pass through the sawed-off hole that served for a door, a woman entered. She was a slight creature, as ill fed as her child. Her face had a pinched, weary look Jenny knew all too well. Furrows of worry etched deep in her forehead and exhaustion had left dark smudges beneath her eyes. Jenny felt a pang of guilt for adding another burden to this woman’s obvious load.
“So ye are going to live, lass.” Mrs. Glendenning sounded surprised, but her thin face blossomed into a warm smile. Like her daughter’s, it was marred by the absence of several teeth. “I’m glad. My Angus would have taken it hard if ye hadn’t.”
“Thank ye for taking me in, ma’am.” Jenny longed to ask the woman about Harris. Mrs. Glendenning might know more than her daughter. Before she could form the words, however, everything in the shed began to spin. Letting her eyes fall shut, Jenny groaned.
“Go easy now, lass. It’ll take you a few days to get your strength back. Nellie, come with me and we’ll get Miss Lennox a bit of hot broth. Rest, lass. Time enough to talk later. If I was ye, I’d say my prayers, though, and thank the good Lord for sparing ye.”
Jenny murmured her agreement. She could not even open her eyes to watch them go. Heeding Mrs. Glendenning’s advice, she surrendered to the inexorable tug of sleep. As she sank back into the peaceful depths of unconsciousness, Jenny also followed the woman’s admonition to pray.
It was not a prayer of thanksgiving she addressed wordlessly to heaven, but an urgent petition.
“Please, God. Let Harris be all right.”
Surprised by his own resiliency, Harris had recovered enough strength that evening to venture a short walk with his host. He’d rather have gone to Glendennings’ to check on Jenny. However, the captain had assured him she was well on the road to recovery and spent most of her time sleeping.
Instead, Harris stood on the wharf at Jardine’s Yard, watching the battered St. Bride limp into harbor. A crew of workers winched the barque up on dry dock for repairs.
“She has a few rents in her hull,” said the grave, quiet man beside him. “I’ll wager the keel’s sound, though. Patched up, she’ll do well enough for coastal runs.”
Harris looked at Robert Jardine, builder of the St. Bride. “How long do ye ken before she’s fit to sail again?”
Jardine ran a hand over his bald pate, pondering the question. “If we had a full crew to work, we could have her seaworthy again in jig time. The trouble is, it’s hay season. There’s scarcely a pair of hands to spare in the whole county. I ken the folks in Chatham will just have to wait for this load of goods—at least what cargo isn’t waterlogged. I can’t see the St. Bride making that run for a good six weeks or better.”
“Six weeks.” Harris tried to keep the eagerness from his voice. He failed miserably.
Robert Jardine cast him a sidelong, questioning look. “So ye’re in no hurry to be on yer way? I reckoned ye might want to get where ye’re going and settle in before winter hits.”
Harris shrugged. “I didn’t have a special destination in mind, so one place is as good as another.” Somewhere he might not be an outsider, as he had been in Dalbeattie. He’d enjoyed the enforced camaraderie of the ocean voyage. If only he could find a similar sense of belonging somewhere in the New World.
He relished the thought of six more weeks with Jenny. Six weeks of late summer. No longer confined aboard ship, but free to wander this strange new land. From what he’d seen, Harris knew it was expansive enough to afford them stolen moments of privacy.
Just then, he was tempted to bless all storms and sandbars, for they had conspired to grant him the gift of time. Time to win Jenny’s heart.
“If ye’ve no place else in mind,” said the shipbuilder, “ye could do worse than bide here. It’s a land of opportunity for a man like ye, Chisholm. Right now, there’s but two kinds of folk in the colony. Ones like me and my brother, who have a bit of capital and a notion to make our fortunes.”
He nodded toward the crew straining on ropes to pull the barque free of the water. “Then there are the fellows with strong backs, no education to speak of, and not a penny to their names. They only want a bit of land to farm and call their own.”
“Aye?” Harris didn’t quite see where the conversation was headed.
“What we don’t have on the Richibucto are men like ye—who’ve an education and some experience in business. If this settlement’s to thrive, we’re going to need managers and justices of the peace.” He grimaced. “Even a politician or two.”
“I don’t fancy myself in politics.” Harris chuckled. “But running a business—aye, I can do that.”
“Say the word and ye can have a place with Jardine Brothers.”
“That’s a generous offer, sir.” Harris shook the hand of his prospective employer. “I’ll think on it and let you know in a day or so.”
“Ye may not think me so generous when ye see the state our ledgers are in,” Robert Jardine replied.
As the two men laughed over this, Harris also shook his head in wonder. Clearly this was a land where opportunities flourished like the endless expanse of forest. He drew a deep breath of air in which were mingled the briny tang of the sea and the spicy resin of pine and spruce.
It smelled like optimism.
The warm scent of fresh milk rose from the churn as Jenny worked the dasher. Like the sharp pungency of lye soap and the fermenting aroma of bread dough, it was one of the many odors of drudgery. Her arms ached and waves of dizziness still took her by times, but she could not lay about being waited on. Not while there was so much work to do and Mrs. Glendenning already worn to a shadow trying to do it.
A pair of black pigs rooted under a nearby oak tree for fallen acorns. In the distance, Jenny could hear the children squealing with glee as they harvested wild raspberries. From the house came the thin wail of the baby. A frail, fitful infant, Jenny doubted he would survive the winter.
With a shiver of apprehension, she wondered if she had made a grave mistake by coming to this wild, alien land. In such primitive conditions, a woman’s lot became harder than ever.
Jenny gazed around her at the Glendenning grant. It was one of the more prosperous, since Captain Glendenning plied a comparatively profitable trade as shipmaster for half the year. Yet it made her father’s modest upland croft look luxurious by comparison.
The family dwelling was a meanly proportioned cabin built from overlapping logs. Cracks between the logs were stuffed with moss to keep out the wind. A few rough outbuildings, like the one where Jenny had slept, housed the livestock in winter. For now they ranged at will, the oxen and milch cows grazing a bit of marshland on the creek bank.
From what Jenny could tell, the Glendennings’ weekday clothes were sewn from heavy sailcloth that made her own plain, serviceable gingham look positively decadent. There was plenty to eat—fish, game and newly ripened vegetables. Imported foodstuffs, like flour and sugar were more strictly rationed. Jenny suspected the early spring must be a hungry season, when stored root crops began to run low and ships from abroad had not yet come.
And what of the winter?
She shivered to think of it. The long, cold, dark days without a scrap of society or cheer. The vast, impenetrable forest looming oppressively around, watchful and hungry.
“Have ye got that butter churned yet, lass?” Mrs. Glendenning appeared, toting two heavy buckets of water from the creek. “The men’ll want it for their dinner.”
“Aye, I ken it’s done.” Jenny felt the flush that had crept into her cheeks. She had taken out her worries on the hapless container of cream, dashing it with frantic vigor.
“Ye can pour off the skim into the pigs’ trough.” Mrs. Glendenning rested for a moment, her thin bosom heaving.
“The baby was crying.” Jenny struggled to keep her balance as the pigs shoved their way to the trough.
After hoisting her pails again, Mrs. Glendenning made for the cabin. “When does he stop?” she muttered, more to herself than to Jenny. “I ken he’s hungry, but he’ll just have to wait till I get the dinner made.”
“Sit down and feed him,” said Jenny. “I’ll see to dinner, or at least get it started.”
“The stew’s on and the bread’s baked.” Mrs. Glendenning made her way into the windowless cabin, with Jenny on her heels. “Ye can cut the bread and set the greens to boil, though. I wish the children would get back from picking berries. I promised Angus a pudding while he’s home.”
She wilted into a low chair that had obviously emigrated from Scotland with the family. Though not a fancy or expensive piece of furniture by any means, it stood out from the cabin’s other rough-hewn appointments. Clearly what was commonplace—even poor—by Galloway standards, passed for elegance in this pioneer settlement.
As Jenny lifted the whimpering infant from his cradle and set him in his mother’s arms, a sudden wave of doubt engulfed her. What of Roderick’s claims of prosperity? Was he as rich as his letter had made him sound—or only rich on the meager scale of his neighbors?
Gathering the crockery for the midday meal from a high shelf, she mused, “Does everyone in the colony live like this?”
Only when Mrs. Glendenning answered did Jenny realize she’d spoken aloud.
“Nay, lass.” The woman’s voice held no resentment—at least not of the question. “Mrs. Jardine has a fine big house and all the hired help she needs to keep it. I hear tell there’s folk in Chatham with proper houses built of stone. I’ve been after Angus for us to have a stone house by and by. He says it’s daft to build with stone when wood’s so plentiful.”
As she set the table, Jenny glanced toward the open cabin door. “Aye,” she breathed. “Wood’s plentiful enough.”
And strange it seemed. The Scottish lowlands and border counties had long been denuded of any great tracts of forest. In this new land, forests hovered around the tiny communities that had been carved out on their fringes. Greedy to reclaim the land and push the invading immigrants back into the sea. How could anything tender hope to survive, much less thrive, in such a place?
Jenny followed the smell of meat and onions to the Glendennings’ summer kitchen. In the cramped lean-to, she hoisted a heavy iron kettle off the fire and replaced it with another, half-full of water and assorted greens.
Pondering Mrs. Glendenning’s words about servants and stone houses, she knew she should be awash with relief. That did not describe the seething stew of emotions that curdled in her belly. It felt more like uncertainty and fear, seasoned with a dash of some nameless longing.
The distant whoops and shrieks of the children reminded Jenny that their mother wanted the berries for a pudding. She picked her way through the dense brush, drawn by their exuberant noise. At last, she found them, clustered around a patch of raspberry nettles—Nellie, her two older brothers and small sister. The red stains around their mouths told tales of many berries that had never made it into their baskets of woven bark.
“What’s all the racket?” she asked. “They’ll be able to hear your noise clear to Chatham.”
“There was a squirrel up that tree.” Nellie pointed toward a towering old pine. “John was pelting him with acorns, and one bounced off and hit me on the head.”
“It was an accident!” young John protested. “No call for her to throw stones at me, the wee telltale.”
For a moment, Jenny had the welcome sensation of being back home again in the midst of her brothers’ squabbles. Evidently some aspects of life didn’t change, no matter how many oceans a body crossed.
“I’m no justice of the peace,” she said. “Ye’ll have to settle this yerselves—without letting more missiles fly, I hope. In the meantime, do ye ken ye’ve left any room in yer stomachs for dinner? Yer ma’s looking to have those berries for a pudding.”
“Hurrah! Bang-belly!” Forgetting their quarrel, the Glendenning fry snatched up their baskets and headed for home at top speed.
With an indulgent chuckle, Jenny set off after them.
She nearly jolted a foot in the air when a warm whisper sounded directly in her ear.
“Ye’ve quite a way with young ones. Ye’ll make a fine mother someday.”
The innocent remark struck at Jenny’s deepest fears. Part of her longed for motherhood. Yet, how could she properly nurture children under conditions like these?
When she spun about to deliver a stinging retort, Jenny landed in the waiting arms of Harris Chisholm. Part of her meant to struggle and pull away from him. Another part, powerful beyond all proportion to its size, longed to lose herself in his eager embrace. Conflicting emotions grappled onto her heart and waged a fierce tug-of-war. Thank heaven, she’d soon be in Chatham, rediscovering her love for Roderick Douglas!
“I was none too certain I’d see ye again, this side of heaven, lass.” Heedless of all propriety, Harris held her close. “Ye gave me quite a turn, at the last. Should ye be up and bossing the wee Glendennings about so soon?”
Reason reasserted itself. Harris had saved her life. He’d come to mean a great deal to her. That didn’t alter the fact that she’d journeyed to New Brunswick to marry Roderick Douglas. After what she’d seen and heard of pioneer life, that marriage was more imperative than ever.
Fighting her inclination to linger against him, Jenny drew back from Harris and tried to answer coolly. “I couldn’t loll in bed all day when poor Mrs. Glendenning has so much to do. Ye don’t look any the worse for our shipwreck adventure. What brings ye here?”
Harris jerked his thumb back toward the homestead. “I brought yer trunk. I can’t vouch for the condition of the contents.”
“My trunk!” exclaimed Jenny. “I reckoned it’d be at the bottom of the channel along with the wreck of the St. Bride.”
“Did the captain not tell ye? The wreck’s in dry dock. She may not be up to crossing the Atlantic again, but Mr. Jardine figures she’ll fare well enough with a Caribbean run.”
“Captain Glendenning’s been busy getting his hay in for winter,” explained Jenny as they ambled back to the cabin. “He’s never said a word about the St. Bride. How soon will it be fit to sail to Chatham?”
“Mr. Jardine says she ought to be ready in six weeks.” Harris made it sound like a marvel of speed.
To Jenny the time stretched ahead indefinitely. “Six weeks!” she wailed. “I can’t cool my heels here for six weeks when Roderick Douglas is expecting me in Chatham. Isn’t there another boat I can take?”
Even as she asked, her neck pricked with gooseflesh at the thought of another sea voyage, however brief. One intimate experience with the dangers of seafaring was quite enough to last her a lifetime. Yet, with a curious flash of insight, Jenny recognized that a greater danger to her lifelong dream lay in the seemingly benign prospect of six more weeks with Harris Chisholm.
“There may be.” Harris shrugged. “And there may not. Mr. Jardine says we oughtn’t count on one. What’s yer hurry anyhow? After what ye said the other night, I minded ye might be having second thoughts about the wedding.”
Jenny rounded on him. “I said nothing of the kind Harris Chisholm and I’ll thank ye not to go putting words in my mouth. If I did say something, it was only because I was off my head with cold and fear we were going to die.”
So fiercely was she concentrating on her vehement protest, Jenny did not see the tree root snaked out on the path before her. She pitched forward, arms swinging wildly, trying in vain to regain her balance. Harris dove to catch her but only succeeded in softening her fall. Together they sprawled onto a bed of moss and ferns.
The vital fragrance of the forest overwhelmed Jenny, as did her body’s vexing reaction to Harris. Her heart galloped almost painfully and her breath came in short, sharp spasms. She felt light-headed and giddy. An alarming, though not unpleasant, warmth spread through her.
It emanated from every point where his person touched hers. His upper arm wedged tight against her bosom. The gentler, but no less intoxicating, pressure of his thigh on hers. The momentary brush of his cheek against her ear. They made her long for all sorts of things she had no business wanting. Least of all from this man, when she was promised to another.
Though her body yearned to lie there, pressing against Harris in even more intimate ways, Jenny’s deep-seated practicality won out.
For this time.
“Get off me now, ye great oaf!” Like a scalded cat, she sprang to her feet and began to pick stray fronds of greenery from her hair.
His face a furious red, Harris got to his feet. “I tried to save ye from braining yerself on the ground, and this is the thanks I get?” Brushing off his vest and breeches, he kept his back turned to her.
I tried to save ye. The words sliced through Jenny like a saber of ice. How often had Harris come to her aid, only to be repaid with insults and ingratitude? He’d saved her life the night of the wreck and she hadn’t so much as acknowledged it. Though he might assume it was because she cared nothing for him, Jenny knew it was because she cared far too much. And feared to care still more.
“Oh, Harris, I’m sorry.” Though she recognized the inherent danger, Jenny could not resist reaching for him. “Ye saved me from far worse than a wee fall, and I haven’t said a word about it. Ye must think me a proper shrew.”
When her hand came to rest on his arm, Harris jerked away, as if her touch burned him. “Think nothing of it,” he muttered. “I gave my word I’d see ye safe to Miramichi.”
“And ye’re a man of yer word.” That and so much more.
Perhaps thinking her comment merited no reply, Harris stalked off toward the Glendenning farm, where the raucous clang of a dinner bell summoned the family to their midday meal.
Jenny hesitated for a moment to wipe the unaccountable tears that had sprung to her eyes. Why did it gall her so, to learn that Harris’s concern sprang from nothing more than a compulsion to honor his word? Surely she didn’t want him motivated by more tender feelings.
Or did she?