Standing on the edge of the Swan cornfield ringed with armed men, Tessa paused to watch the work. So many laborers made short shrift of the midsummer harvest. Her small part was helping Ma bring the gleaners the noon meal and enough switchel to drink. Hatted and sweating heavily, these settlement men banded together to cut and bundle the sheaves.
Later, she would work alongside her brothers to pull the blades from the nearly naked stalks, bundling them once again for those lean winter months when the livestock needed fodder. White dent corn was her favorite, sweet and full of milk. The delectable ears were left to harden and dry till first frost. For now, her brothers kept up a robust debate about storing the crop in the corn house they’d built of notched logs near the springhouse.
“I say we pick by day and husk by night,” Lemuel told them during the noon rest.
“I beg to differ,” Zadock replied. “Pa always said it’s best left in the husk. So long as you store it dry, it won’t go to ruin.”
“I’m most worried about the winter wheat. Should have been sown between corn rows like Pa told of overmountain.” Jasper kicked at a field stone. “Mayhap we should consider the flour trade, grind our neighbors’ corn by gristmill. The river’s calling for it right where it forks into Cane Creek.”
“Become a millwright?” Cyrus’s brow lifted. “Seems sensible. Plenty of stones to be had for the foundation just upriver. Highly profitable enterprise, Tygart says.”
Hiding a smile, Tessa gathered up the empty baskets from the nooning. Tygart this, Tygart that. You’d think he was part of the Trinity the way her brothers revered him. Squinting, she raised a hand to the sun to shield her eyes as she turned toward its golden gaze.
She kept to the edge of the field, hemmed in by the armed guard and the reapers, her arms ringed with empty baskets so cleverly crafted by Keturah. How she missed her old friend, the work of her hands an ongoing reminder.
Nearer the cabin, a crow’s raucous squawk greeted her. With a practiced eye she probed the outbuildings and cabin for anything amiss. With so many working the corn, the place stood unguarded. Oddly empty. Even Snuff had gone to the fields.
She stopped at the well. The cold limestone water made a fine drink. Lowering the pail, she ignored the slight chill that skittered through her like a touch of winter on a summer’s day. Halfway to the bottom, the rope stilled in her hand. Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Fear was never far away. She’d felt its cold clutch since childhood. Till now that fear had to do with other people. Keturah. Pa. But this . . .
This felt near. Personal.
Lord, help Thou me.
Her hands shook. The breath she was holding burned her chest. All at once she let go of the rope, hearing the splash and plop of the pail as it smacked the water below. Whirling, she faced whatever was at her back. But no arrow whistled through the air, no upraised tomahawk. Just deep-green woods all a-rustle in the wind.
Relief jellied her legs, yet the chary feeling remained. How had it been for Pa that fatal day? Had he known the same terror, that deep-rooted sense something was amiss, before he was cut down?
“Miss Swan?”
She swirled round again, so fast her skirts ballooned. Still in the grip of something she couldn’t name, she faced the man she couldn’t quite push from her conscience.
Clay slid to the ground from Bolt’s back. His own expression, ever watchful, turned more so in response to hers. He wasn’t looking at her but in back of her now, at the westernmost woods. Slowly he walked to the well, rifle in hand. For the first time she saw a tomahawk dangling from his belt. And a long knife. Her own gun, carelessly left inside on so busy a day, was pointedly amiss.
“You all right?” he asked her.
“I am now.” Odd how a body found relief in company. The skittery feeling began to retreat, Clay’s presence solid and reassuring.
They stood without moving, the well between them. “Go ahead and draw your water.” His voice was so hushed she sensed he felt what she felt, that same nameless caution.
She returned to drawing her water. The bucket resurfaced, and at last she had her drink.
He winked, dispelling the remaining tension. “Adam’s ale.”
The old name for well water made her smile as she handed him the gourd dipper. Behind him, Bolt began to rip and tear at a particularly rich patch of weeds. Horses, of all creatures, were especially nervy when danger neared. This stallion seemed to have nary a care.
Clay hung the gourd dipper from a rusted nail. “How goes the harvest?”
“Well enough.” She began picking up the baskets she’d discarded in the grass. “I’m surprised to see you . . .” Her voice trailed away. Surely a man who paid her any mind wouldn’t let so much time pass.
“I regret that.” He removed his hat, the wind smoothing out the dark strands, like she longed to do with her fingers. “A harried season.”
He spoke the truth. She’d seen the ledgers and posts on his desk, the endless interruptions, his never-ending turn at watch, the steady stream of folks in and out of the fort. Far more.
“Ever think of making a better life beyond those pickets?” she asked, straightening.
“Aye, Tessa.”
Something melted inside her. She’d not had to say his name first. He’d said hers. And the way he said it . . . soft and gentle, almost like a caress. Like he’d reached out and placed his hand at the small of her back. But he hadn’t touched her, least not with his hands, just his eyes. They held hers with an intensity that forever banished any doubt as to his feelings.
Still, she was cautious. “I suppose you’re here for the harvest, Colonel.”
“In time. But first I—” He was still looking at her, the warmth in his voice another caress. “I want to hear you say my name.”
“Well, fancy that. I’ve always wanted to call you Clay, Clay.”
He smiled then, the broadest she’d yet seen, his teeth strikingly white in his deeply tanned face. He even looked a bit bashful, as if this was all new and untried, like a first dance or a new suit of clothes.
The sun ducked behind a cloud, and she gestured to a bench beneath the shade of a chestnut. “Care to sit?”
She stored her baskets in the nearby shed, then returned to find he’d sat down, when she’d expected he’d head straight to the fields. Now every thought in her head emptied. She took a seat beside him, so close her skirts brushed his leg.
“You missing Keturah?” he asked, resting his rifle across his knees.
“Nary a minute goes by that I don’t think of her.” Though I think of you more.
“They should have reached the Tuscarawas by now.”
Should have. No promises.
“How will we ever know?” she wondered aloud.
“Pay them a call at some peaceful juncture in future.”
“So far,” she lamented. “A hundred miles or better?” With you, I’d brave it. Especially if we went east.
“A day’s walk, aye,” he said.
Her smile was wry. “You’ve got sturdier moccasins than I.”
“Beautiful country. Takes the tired right out of you.”
She looked to her lap, smoothing a crease in her apron. “Still no word from her kin?”
“Nay. There might be none. I believe she’ll be more content with the Moravians.”
She swallowed. Dared. “How was it for you when you were taken and returned?”
A pause. “Harsh.”
She waited for more, his one-word answers wearing a discontented hole in her. “You never speak of it . . .”
“I favor the Lenape custom of not discussing the dead.” Even though they sat talking quietly, his gaze made a repeated sweep of the clearing and edges of the forest. “Let the past stay in the past.”
His simple explanation only stoked her curiosity, the yearning to know more, to tread the untraveled, untrammeled parts of him.
“I felt the same after Pa died. But I find it helps not to skirt around him, not tread too carefully. I want to remember, if only the good.”
“I’d like to have met him.” He traced the scrolled engraving on his rifle’s brass mountings with a callused forefinger. “Which of your brothers is most like him?”
“Ross,” she said without thought. “Pa rarely spoke a surly word. He stayed on the sunny side. Ross is the same.”
“And you? Or are you a bit waspish like Hester?”
“You tell me,” she replied, raising her chin to look at him.
“I could put you to the test, as Daniel Boone did with Rebecca.”
“What means you?”
“He mislaid his hunting knife and made a tear in her cambric apron.”
“On purpose?”
“Aye, to try her temper.”
“The rascal!”
“Nary a complaint did she make.”
“I’d likely have stayed a spinster.”
His low chuckle lent to her warm skin. “You might have mimicked Hester, aye. But as it stands, there’s hope.”
“Hope?”
His decisive nod ensnared her further. She couldn’t look away, captured by his face in profile with all its handsome lines and angles, the heavily fringed lashes, darker even than his charcoal hair.
“I know a man who’s right fond of you.”
Surprise pinched her. “And who might that be?”
He hesitated as if trying to collect the details. “New to the settlement. Stands over six feet tall. Not much to look at—”
“Says who?”
“Hester,” he returned with another chuckle. “But he’s a quick study. From parts east. Outshoots any gun along the Buckhannon, if not the border.”
“I’d be pleased to meet him.”
“All right then.” He pulled himself to his feet, rifle dangling from a large hand, leaving her hanging just like he’d done after that muster-day kiss.
Reaching out, she took his other hand in her own and gave it a little squeeze before releasing it reluctantly. “Give him my regards then.”
He smiled down at her before retrieving his hat in the grass. It looked in need of a good washing, though the rest of him was tidy, his once-bewhiskered jaw smooth as newly tanned buckskin. “Better hie to the fields.”
Jasper was approaching in the distance, the ball of a two o’clock sun behind him. Clay turned his back on her. Called his horse. She had no clue as to when she’d see him again. Here was ample opportunity to stake his claim, yet . . .
“What are you afraid of, Clay?” she called after him.
He swung round, pinning her with that startling gaze. “You been talking to Maddie?”
“Nay,” she said. What did Maddie have to do with it?
Touching his hat brim as if signaling an end to the conversation, he kept on, pausing briefly to speak to Jasper on his way.
“Is there a wedding in the offing, little sister?” Jasper said once Clay was out of earshot.
She stared at Clay’s back. “Hardly.”
“Well, Ma may have a suitor, if you don’t.”
She followed him to the barn, bemused. “Where is Ma?”
“At the edge of the cornfield, courting.” He sunk his axe into a chopping block. “Old Eb.”
“The widower Westfall? I wondered why she was tarrying in the fields.”
Jasper seemed pleased. “A worthy match.”
Worthy in the sense that Westfall owned more acreage than any in the valley, maybe, and served as county magistrate. Jasper was all pounds and pence and position.
She left the barn and returned to the cornfield to find Ma indeed in Westfall’s company beneath a spreading sycamore tree. And Clay with them to boot. Such sent her scurrying back to the cabin and Jasper, wondering if Westfall would join them for supper.
Though it was hours away, the venison needed tendering on the spit outside, the corn with the husks left on to roast in the ashes. She chopped potatoes with a vengeance, her brisk movements making short shrift of the work.
Sure enough, near five o’clock, Westfall stood at their door. “Miss Tessa.” He removed his hat, revealing a full head of white hair despite his sixty years. “Your ma asked me to supper.”
Tessa wiped her hands on her apron and welcomed him in. Would Clay follow? Hope barely crested before disappointment swept in. Ma appeared, toting a piggin of milk, Ross following. He winked at her, clearly enjoying the turn of events. She’d paid it little mind when Ma had paired with the widower for a reel or two at the frolic, but truly, the matter begged pondering.
Westfall quietly took Pa’s place. Tessa felt a twinge. The head of the table usually sat empty, though after Pa passed she’d had a hard time breaking her habit of setting his place, then whisking away the fork and spoon and tankard amid her tears.
Six men now ringed the long table once again, she and Ma serving. Talk centered upon the harvest, the usual tittle-tattle of the settlement when folks got together. This was no doubt a novel supper for the childless Westfall, surrounded by the Swan brood. Tessa said little, content to listen and try to make sense of the events of her own unforeseen afternoon as well as Ma’s newfound courtship.
With a telling glance at his sister, Zadock picked up his fork and commenced eating. “I thought Colonel Tygart would join us.”
Jasper shook his head, sparing Tessa an explanation. “Tygart had matters to see to upriver.”
Wed to the fort, he was, and rightfully so for the betterment of the settlement. She tucked her disappointment away and smiled as Ma served bowls of apple tansy brimming with cream. To their amusement, at Westfall’s leave-taking Ma disappeared with him into the moonlit night.
Once the door shut, Ross’s whisper rocked them all. “Reckon he’ll try to kiss her?”
Lemuel shook with silent laughter. “He’d be a fool not to.”
“Likely Pa’s turning in his grave,” Zadock sputtered around his pipe.
“Pa, my eye.” Cyrus snorted. “What about Mistress Westfall? In her eternity box but six months!”
With a wink, Jasper brought an end to their merriment as Ma came back into the cabin, cheeks rosy as pippin apples. If ever a woman looked like she’d been kissed . . .
Tessa began clearing the table amid the aroma of pipe smoke as plans were made for the morrow’s work. At last the cabin settled and she climbed atop her thin mattress, lying on her back and staring at the high rafters. Try as she might, she couldn’t nod off, couldn’t even keep her mind on Clay. Summer thunder growled, threatening the ongoing harvest. She preferred the gentle spring peepers and warm rain. The brittle rustle of wind in the autumn leaves. Even the perfect stillness of a winter snowfall.
Tonight all creation seemed to groan, as Scripture said. The wolves especially made a terrible night music. She listened to their howls, haunting and otherworldly. That shadowy feeling that had overtaken her earlier at the well returned. Something felt different, some strange, cold force pressing in on all sides of them.
God, help us. Spare us. Please.