11

Hester’s waspish gaze settled on Tessa as she descended the loft ladder at first light. Not one gunshot nor war whoop had troubled her sleep. With Ma gone to milk and Keturah still abed, Tessa braced herself for whatever Great-Aunt Hester would say.

“My rheumatism’s raging this morn.”

“You look hale and hearty to me,” Tessa returned.

“Nonsense. You know nothing about my old bones. Now tie on your apron and finish what I started.”

Tessa looked to the hearth’s fire, where a lone kettle simmered. Nary a whiff of breakfast to be had. Resigned, she did as her bossy aunt bade and reached for her apron, eyes going wide at Hester’s next brow-raising order.

“Colonel Tygart likes his coffee hot and his hoecakes brown.” At that, she pulled a rocking chair nearer the window and sat down hard, adding an exclamation point to her words.

Tessa set her jaw. Did Hester truly expect her to fix the commander’s breakfast? She’d rather face a multitude of redmen than obey this blatant attempt at matchmaking. Her great-aunt had many fine qualities, but tact wasn’t one of them. Nor was patience.

“Quit your dawdling!” Hester scolded as Tessa took a quick look in a cracked looking glass hauled overmountain long ago. “The man can’t manage a garrison on an empty stomach.”

Tessa shot a glance at the half-open cabin door. Doggone the milking! Where was Ma when she needed her to put a stop to such foolishness?

“Oh, and he’s overfond of sweetening, just so you know,” Hester said with a wave of her hand. “Prefers loaf sugar but he’ll take molasses in a pinch.”

Biting back a retort, Tessa stepped outside into a morning of warm mist, the sky a pleasing pink, the common littered with last night’s revelry. A stone’s throw away was the blockhouse, door open wide, the hearty smell of bear bacon beckoning. Her own stomach rumbled.

Shutting her eyes, she uttered a hasty, heartfelt prayer and then, still addled as a bee in a butter churn, bridged the short distance to the blockhouse. There at the hearth were the fixings of a commander’s breakfast. She noted both coffee and tea. Plenty of sweetening.

No colonel.

From the loft above came a few decisive sounds. The thud of a boot. The opening of a shutter. Singing.

Though low, the voice was distinct and melodious, even rich. “The Nightingale”? ’Twas a tune she knew well. She bit her lip to keep from joining in and focused on the task before her. First, a daub of grease in a hot iron skillet, then hoecake batter fried a deep brown. She herself liked them golden with butter, no sweetening.

“Good morning, one morning, one morning in May,

I spied a young couple all on the highway,

And one was a lady so bright and so fair,

And the other was a soldier, a brave volunteer . . .”

She half chuckled at her old aunt’s prank on Colonel Tygart. What would he think of that?

“Good morning, good morning, good morning to thee,

Now where are you going, my pretty lady?”

Clay paused singing long enough to shave, maneuvering the razor with long, even swipes over his bristled skin. He toweled off on a soft piece of tow linen, taking a last look at the common below through his open window.

A few discarded wooden cups, even a pewter one, glinting in the dirt and grass. A muddy shoe and colorful handkerchief. A few crude toys. All evidence of a merry time, even if one of the fort’s spies had brought a grim report. Few who’d come for the frolic would likely leave the fort till better news was brought.

He resumed his low song, something he’d missed on the trail, though he heard Boone oft sang at the top of his lungs in devil-may-care defiance. But he couldn’t risk the women in his party, so he’d stayed silent all the way from Fort Pitt to Fort Tygart.

As his boot struck the first step, a warm, womanly voice joined in from below. Not Hester. The old woman hadn’t a song in her wilderness-hardened soul. His steps quickened till his boots sounded like a small storm.

“Good morning, good morning, good morning to thee.

Now where are you going, my pretty lady?

I’m going to travel to the banks of the sea,

To see the waters gliding, hear the nightingales sing.”

There at the hearth was a becoming if surprising sight. Miss Swan? Her back to him, she deftly flipped his favored hoecakes, using a free hand to grasp hold of a kettle’s handle with her apron.

Taking a seat at the table, he hated to end her singing. She had a lovely voice, sweet and full-bodied. When she swung around armed with his breakfast, her blatant consternation made him chuckle.

“And your great-aunt is . . . ?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” she answered. A telltale pink stained her features, confirming his suspicions.

Best say it outright. “And bent on a little matchmaking.”

Tessa gave an aggrieved nod. It wasn’t hard to figure. Hester Swan had left a trail of bread crumbs to her niece since she’d cooked his very first meal.

“Tessa is a hand with her garden. Her quince preserves are second to none. She can knit a pair of stockings nearly as fast as I fry an egg. Ever since she was small, my niece has been a wonder digging ginseng. Fleet of foot too. She may not be fancy as a town-bred girl, but she steps a fine reel . . .”

Tessa turned her back on him, retrieving a rasher of bacon. Molasses and butter were already before him, including his usual pewter plate and cup. Eyes down, she set the meat on the table. In the ensuing quiet came a noisy growling. Her stomach?

“Let’s give Hester some satisfaction, aye?” Forking two hoecakes off the stack onto his plate, he added meat and the neatly turned eggs she’d almost forgotten, then reached across the crude table and plunked down the plate.

Their eyes met, hers befuddled. Already she’d begun backing out the door.

“Nay, Miss Swan. Stay.”

A slightly sheepish smile and a blush graced her face. “Is that an order, sir?”

He nodded and started to rise to fetch a second plate, but she’d already whisked it from a shelf. “Overmountain tea or coffee?” he asked.

She sat, eyeing both. “Tea.” Slowly, she reached for the jug of cream yet bypassed the sweetening. “No trouble during the night, I reckon.”

“False alarm, mayhap,” he said, taking coffee with plenty of cream, the fragrant steam rising. “Or a close call.”

Fork mid-mouth, he stayed his hand when she said without a flinch, “I’d be obliged if you’d bless breakfast.”

Tarnation. Suddenly at sea in his own fort, Clay simply stared at her like the heathen he was. Her earnest gaze was violet-gray in the morning shadows, reminding him of polished silver in a shop window.

“We always hold hands doing it,” she said, reaching across the bountiful plates between them.

Humbled and caught off guard, he took her warm, callused fingers in his as she bowed her head reverently and waited. The words that lodged in his throat were so dusty, so tarnished, he had to reach to the uttermost to grasp but a few.

“We thank Thee, Lord, for this our food for life and health and every good . . . By Thine own hand may we be fed.” He swallowed, still groping. “Give us each day our daily bread. Amen.”

Somehow she looked satisfied. He felt he’d successfully run the gauntlet. They released hands, returning to their blessed breakfast, the finest the frontier had to offer. Closing her eyes, she took a sip of fine English tea from Morris and Willing of Philadelphia. Her childish delight tickled him. She was used to making do with nettles and sassafras, likely. City tea was a luxury.

This morn she’d exchanged her pretty party dress for plain homespun. The linen fichu about her shoulders was spotless and smooth, tucked into a striped bodice of common frontier weave, her skirt indigo blue. Covering her dark hair was a linen cap, the barest ruffle at the edge, its strings untied and dangling.

Bare of foot, she accidentally brushed his boot beneath the table. Mercy, but she made it hard for a man to mind his meal. Despite the heavy aroma of fried meat and the more delicate fragrance of hyson tea, he detected clean linen. Herbs. Something else he couldn’t name. Thankfully, he didn’t reek of the trail and was clean-shaven to boot.

She ate slowly, pinching off a bite of hoecake, then taking another sip of tea. A caution for him to slow down, rein in his plans to clean up the common and meet with the settlement men before the sun was three fingers high.

She chewed on a piece of bacon. “Maddie and Jude don’t eat with you?”

“Sometimes.”

“How’d you make their acquaintance?”

He swallowed a last bite, washing it down with more coffee. “In the last war. Jude was a hostler and Maddie a laundress with the army under Braddock.”

“And you?”

“Spy. Scout. Sharpshooter.”

“How’d you come to talk Indian?” Unlike some, she asked carefully, her voice respectful. Free of distaste.

“I was taken as a boy by the Lenape.”

She stopped eating and refilled her tea. “Like Keturah.”

“Aye.” He steeled himself for more questions, but none came. Yet he sensed they simmered beneath the surface and would be asked and answered in time. He had a few for her, but they too would wait.

For now, it was enough to enjoy the novelty of her homespun company. In this room there were no airs, no pretense, no rules, no noose-tight stock pinching his sunburnt neck. Just a simple man and woman thrust together by a fearsome wrinkle of a woman who might well be hovering outside the blockhouse door.

He couldn’t resist a final, amused parry. “There are so many men here and so few women that your aunt has little reason to ply her matchmaking skills.”

“Aye, but Great-Aunt Hester is besotted with you.”

“And you’re not?”

“Nay.” A downward sweep of her lashes. “I’ve had my fill of five brothers. No need to add a husband.”

“A husband is an altogether different matter than a brother.”

“A man’s a man,” she said quietly. “You’re all a hand at snoring and scratching yourselves, belching, and making a mighty mess of laundry.”

This was uttered with such spirit that he nearly spat out his coffee as he laughed. “Mind if I start calling you the Spinster Swan?”

“Doesn’t pain me.”

“Neither does it cure Hester’s matchmaking.”

“I’d be pleased to tell her you’re promised to somebody overmountain,” she offered.

“That would be a lie.” The perfumed, pampered Miss Penrose flashed to mind and was quickly set aside. He refilled his coffee. “If it eases you any, I’m here to defend the settlement, not marry into it.”

“A shame, Colonel.” A finger of light from the open door turned her eyes purple as a blooming thistle. “If you change your mind, there’s a few unwed women and two young widows within Fort Tygart’s walls.”

He sat back, looking to his desk across the room and the stack of correspondence and ledgers that needed tending. “I’m more in need of spies.”

“Spies are hard to keep alive.” Her face clouded. “You might have better luck with a wife. Then you’d no longer have Hester to do for you and we’d both be free of her badgering.”

She spoke simply. Logically. Like one of her brothers might. Despite her noncommittal words, he was taking too much stock in her company. “How goes it with Keturah?”

Something flickered in her eyes. “She’s quiet. Keeps close to Ma.” A slight smile. “She recollects how to milk.”

A rooster crowed outside, nearly snuffing his words. “I’ve sent a post east to print in city papers about her return.”

“So her kin might happen upon it?” She looked downcast now, staring at her empty plate. “I’d hoped she’d settle here in time. Once I wished she’d make a match with Jasper. He’s nigh on thirty now.”

The eldest Swan. He tripped over her brothers’ names and faces at times, as they looked and spoke alike. “Before the Indians took her, was there some tie?”

“She was awful young back then, but aye, seems like. She always took to Jasper and he was always teasing her. But here lately . . .”

“But?”

“Jasper wants her gone.” Her voice dropped as if she was afraid of being overheard. She fixed her gaze over his shoulder, staring at the buffalo robe pegged to the wall behind him. “Says she’s now more red than white and will likely return to the Indians.”

He mulled this a moment. “What happened to your pa?” Whatever had become of Mister Swan bled through to Jasper’s regard of Keturah, likely.

Swallowing, firming her chin, she answered, “Tomahawked at the ferry three years back. Jasper found him first.”

“I’m sorry.” He meant it. He’d seen his own parents slain as a boy. The horrific memory was like a brand, embedded deep. Nobody could blame Jasper for shunning Keturah, yet Tessa and Mistress Swan made a bold bid to keep her at their cabin. To them she was clearly innocent, a helpless survivor of her circumstances.

Tessa met his eyes again. “Do you think she’ll return to the Indians?”

Would she? “Time will answer.”

A sudden shadow turned their attention to the door. Keturah stood there in Maddie’s borrowed garments, sunlight illuminating her white-gold hair. She’d wrapped her long braid about her head in a sort of crown. Maddie’s doing?

“Come in,” he told her with a welcoming motion.

Keturah hesitated, gaze rising to the wood rafters. In a touching gesture, Tessa rose from her seat, went to the door, and took her hand, leading her to the table. Sitting down at Tessa’s bidding, Keturah watched as Tessa served what was left of their breakfast.

Keturah tasted the tea with some curiosity, then eyed the bread. “Indian mush cakes?” she asked him in Lenape.

“Hoecakes,” he replied in English, watching as she spread them with butter and poured a generous amount of sweetening on top.

He eyed his desk again, still impatient to begin but feeling pleasantly full of far more than breakfast.

He owed Hester.