The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn Page 11

  “All right, then. My answer’s aye. I’ll marry you.”

  His heart gave a heady thump as relief flooded her face, and all he could do for a moment was suck the air into his chest, and look at her, and marvel that she’d come up with such a plan, and hope the feelings she’d stirred in him weren’t showing on his face. She started to speak, but he raised a hand to stop her.

  “We’ll do this, but it ain’t going to be a simple undertaking.”

  Her chin stayed raised. “Simple or not, it’s what I choose.”

  Still stunned as a bear clubbed in its den, Jesse held the stirrup for her and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Reckon, then, you and me are headed for Jonesborough.”

  Western North Carolina

  Four days out from Morganton, Charlie Spencer stared into the forest gloom and cringed at the sound of two flatlanders tromping through the underbrush. Seeing to the necessary, quiet as a pair of buffalo.

  Nell, lying against his thigh, raised her head at the ruckus and gave him a look of pure disgust. He grunted agreement with his hound, gripped his rifle, and went back to scanning the shadows thickening among the trees.

  Charlie had made a habit out of not tangling himself in the affairs of strangers. As a rule, it kept his nose clean and got no man, or woman, riled enough to come hunting his hide, or those hides he spent half the year harvesting to keep body and soul together the other half. A confirmed loner he was—aside from the dogs and mules. But critters were easy company. They let a body go where he aimed and didn’t pester him as to why. Just how it fell out he’d agreed to guide Hezekiah Parrish and Ambrose Kincaid Overmountain to the French Broad River settlements, when he’d meant to be making for his fall camp above the Holston, still had Charlie scratching his head like the dogs had shared their fleas again.

  He’d scarce set foot in Morganton afore hearing of the Parrish woman’s murder and her daughter’s kidnapping. In the trade store, swapping hides for cornmeal, bullet lead, coffee, and sugar, he’d no more’n half-listened to the tale—till it reached the particulars of the missing girl. That’s when he knew. He’d seen that girl with her dazed dark eyes. He’d seen her kidnapper, who’d said he was her husband, taking home his bride. Worst of it was, he’d known it wasn’t one of those times he could shoulder on past, leaving folk to their own messy affairs.

  He’d found the fellow called Parrish and told what he’d seen above his meadow camp. Before Charlie knew it, the girl’s would-be suitor had joined them, seizing on this lead to her whereabouts, as fired as his red hair to be after her. That’s when the whole thing went sliding out from under Charlie like a pig on a pine-needled slope. Plans were made, avowals of rescue and reprisal uttered. Then all eyes turned his way. He was last to see the girl. He knew the mountains. Surely he wouldn’t abandon the refined Miss Littlejohn to the mercies of a murdering backwoodsman out in the perilous wilds.

  Sitting now, the fire warming his side, he reminded himself it was a good thing he was doing, the right thing, even if the search had so far turned up nothing. If the kidnapper had taken Miss Littlejohn to the French Broad country like he’d claimed to be doing, someone ought to have seen them by now. She wasn’t a woman easily put out of mind. Even he’d seen that. But their failure to find trace of her wasn’t what was plaguing Charlie most grievous as night closed ’round the camp.

  “I’ve lost my razor strop to that foul stream!”

  Charlie’s shoulders hunched as Parrish fought his way out of a laurel thicket into firelight, coat creased and patched with damp, hose stained, brow dark as clouds fixing to spit hail.

  It had been a trying day for Parrish. The only settlement they’d come across since breaking camp that morning had been burnt and abandoned. At the outset Charlie had cautioned they’d be traveling through Chickamauga-ravished country and such was to be expected. Still the sight had set Parrish on edge. Not that he was ever what you’d call sanguine.

  Next they’d crossed a tributary to the French Broad, in full spate on account of rain upslope. Parrish’s horse balked midway, dumping him and the contents of a poorly tied saddlebag into the creek. Charlie had hitched his lead mule and went back to help, while Kincaid dismounted to do likewise.

  Despite the dogs romping through it all, thinking it a game, they’d saved most of what the creek snatched, including Parrish, who kicked one of the dogs in a fit of temper. Hearing Tuck’s yip, Charlie had—behind Parrish’s back—reached for his belt ax. Spying Kincaid’s look of warning, he’d recalled himself and let the incident go. But it rankled.

  In the end Parrish lost a tinderbox, a pair of thread stockings too fine to be of use, and apparently a razor strop. Though they’d built the fire on the spot to dry his things, Parrish still looked put out as he unrolled his bedding and tossed stones from beneath it into the brush.

  Pelting how many Injuns? The thought made Charlie grin, till a voice hailed from out of the dark.

  “Cease! I come in peace.” Kincaid stepped from the trees, rubbing a spot on his forehead blooming to match his hair.

  Parrish stopped hurling stones and sat to tug off his boots, looking disgusted at the sucking sound they made coming free.

  At the start of this business, Parrish had shown more’n a smidgen of deference to Kincaid, the young Virginia gentleman. But strain had frayed the merchant’s regard till plain civility was wearing thin as threadbare linen.

  Maybe he could be excused. Parrish had buried his wife in a hasty grave back in Morganton and must be out of his mind with worry for his stepdaughter.

  Or not. Heck if Charlie could tell. Give him a dog any day. A mule, even. People had too many layers to work through to get at their truth. Charlie Spencer mistrusted layers, and Parrish seemed possessed of more’n his fair share.

  Ringo, his old dog, yawned. The mules and horses, hobbled in grass near enough to guard, swished their tails and scented the camp with their droppings. Tuck lay at the edge of the firelight, eyes shining. Nell pressed her bony spine against his leg and sighed.

  “You may borrow mine as needed,” Kincaid said after a prickly silence.

  Parrish looked across the fire. “I beg your pardon?”

  “My strop. You may borrow it.”

  Though he’d taken to roughing it with somewhat better grace, Kincaid was no gladsome companion either. Around the fire at night, he mostly brooded—or stared at that tiny portrait of the girl they were tracking, though he tried to do the latter on the sly. He had it bad for Miss Littlejohn, and intentions dark as Parrish’s for the man who’d murdered her ma and taken her Overmountain. Stringing him from the nearest tree was the favorite means of reckoning he’d heard the two discussing.

  “Vile roots.” Parrish got up to drag his bedding to another spot and commenced flinging stones again before finally lying down.

  Kincaid caught Charlie’s eye. “Will you turn in as well?”

  “Aiming to keep watch long as I can. One o’ ye gents of a mind to spell me?”

  Parrish had gone still. Asleep, or letting on to be. Kincaid got up and retreated to the edge of the firelight, saying neither aye nor nay.

  Charlie turned his gaze back into the dark, longing to find the girl and be done with the business. And present company.

  The pairing of them was what confounded him most—men who’d likely never rub shoulders in life, brought together by that pretty face in the portrait Kincaid was even now slipping out of his coat pocket to moon over.

  Women. Too much trouble to fool with, if you asked Charlie. A few more days, maybe a week, they’d find the girl, part ways, and he’d hightail it to the Holston, get back to blessed solitude. Or maybe … maybe he’d go visit that piedmont land in the Carraways, hilly acres back east he’d laid down shillings for years back while caught up in the notion he might make a farmer—a delusion half a summer shook him free of.

  Just as well. A farmer needed sons. To get sons he’d need a wife, and Charlie Spencer was more sure now than he’d been in
his six-and-thirty years that he could get along fine without one of those.

  The State of Franklin …

  and North Carolina

  It was morning, and Mr. Bird had left her again. This time he’d left the horse too, promising to return before she’d time to miss him. He’d set off at a lope into the trees, so Tamsen supposed he meant it.

  Since that frightful day of the rainstorm, he’d met with Cade and the settlers twice, leaving her within shouting distance concealed along the wagon trace. This time he’d been evasive in his going, saying he needed to speak to someone before they continued on—the first indication Tamsen had that they were near wherever he called home. Good thing he knew. She was truly and utterly bewildered as to where she was.

  For the past two days, they’d avoided farms and settlements when they could. From high trails that wound through massive hardwoods, Tamsen had glimpsed scattered homesteads carved from wooded coves, each with acres of standing corn, a cabin with a chimney wafting smoke into the vibrant blue of early autumn.

  Or was it yet summer? The mountain ash and maple had been tipped with scarlet on the heights, the great chestnuts flushed with gold. But around her now all was green. The air had warmed as they came down off the windy balds. Before her lay a rolling country, hemmed by lesser ridges. It looked a peaceful land, nothing to indicate the strife transpiring there.

  “Tell me if I have this straight.” Tamsen had looked down from the saddle at the tail of Jesse Bird’s hair, bleached to a shade nearly blond at the ends, as they’d made their way across another of the seemingly endless ridges. “There’s the Old State faction—those who think this land west of the mountains is still North Carolina—and the New State faction, who call it Franklin. Both maintain a court in each county, and both expect the people to pay them taxes?”

  “Right enough. You got Governor John Sevier and his ilk on the Franklin side. Colonel John Tipton at the head of the North Carolinians. Jonesborough is Franklin’s town. Ten miles away, Tipton holds sessions for North Carolina. I figure we best marry under both states—so we wind up legal in the end.” He’d looked up at her briefly. “Cade and I, we keep out of that fray. Not hard to do when you spend half the year roaming for furs.”

  Roaming. Maybe his use of that word had been the start of it, the first layer of uncertainty sifting down like silt over the choice she’d made. Would he still want to roam once they were married? If so, what would she be expected to do? Stay behind in a cabin somewhere, not even certain what state she was in?

  Surely he’d exaggerated the situation. People couldn’t live under such confusion. Or had he understated it so as not to frighten her?

  His horse, waiting more patiently in the little clearing than she was doing, chose that moment to ruckle down its nose—a sound befitting thoughts of Jesse Bird’s delicacy in sparing her feelings at this point. She couldn’t be more unnerved by the unknown stretching before her, and she wasn’t thinking primarily of land. Or politics.

  Standing by the stream, alone with her thoughts for the first time in days, she confronted the doubts that had built up since she stood above that draw and asked Mr. Bird to marry her.

  Mama, what would you have done?

  The answer hit her so square that she dropped to her knees, sick in her stomach. Her mother would have gone through with this risky marriage. Her mother had gone through with such a marriage so that Tamsen would have a decent roof over her head, security, comfort. Instead of repaying her mother’s sacrifice by doing what her stepfather wanted of her, Tamsen had broken the bars of that cage, and her mother had paid the price.

  She bowed her face into her hands. “Mama, I’d undo it all if I could. I’d stay at that table and smile at Mr. Kincaid no matter what I was thinking. But it’s too late, and I don’t want them to find me—or Mr. Bird. Or taking me away if they do.”

  By what means could she keep that from happening save marrying Mr. Bird?

  With empathy for her mother like she’d never known, Tamsen willed her stomach to settle and rose to make use of what time was left her.

  Never mind the State of Franklin. It was the state of her clothing that presently grieved her. Her torn petticoat and jacket were too bedraggled for a rinse in the stream to improve matters, had there been time for the garments to dry. Mr. Bird had seen her in worse—his own clothes—but even while dreading marrying Mr. Kincaid, this wasn’t how she’d pictured herself on The Day. Then, at least, there had been the consolation of her stepfather’s finest silk. Pearls sewn on her bodice and entwined in her hair. And lace. Rivers and falls of lace. And she’d been clean, not soiled head to toe from crossing mountains and sleeping by open fires.

  Kneeling at the stream, she washed her face. There was little help for her hair beyond brushing it out and coiling it off her neck, secured with the ivory combs. That left her pinner, which she anchored with the carefully hoarded hairpins. One bit of lace, soiled as the rest of her.

  Somewhere near, a branch snapped.

  Tamsen’s heart skipped as a deer stepped from the brush across the stream, saw her, and bounded off again, white tail high. Nothing else moved among the trees except the birds. Their songs filled the air, shrill above the stream’s chatter. Like the frantic voices still clamoring inside her, for all her willing them silent.

  There was no turning back time, no making things as they were before she walked away from Mr. Kincaid. She told herself marriage to Jesse Bird was a better prospect than marriage to any man her stepfather would have chosen. At least Mr. Bird didn’t own slaves.

  Did he own anything at all? He hadn’t pressed upon her any knowledge of himself that she hadn’t sought to learn, save that he’d called himself a poor man. She wished she’d sought a little more diligently.

  “Lord, have mercy,” she said, rising from the stream. As she did, Mr. Bird stepped from the trees.

  He hadn’t worn his breechclout today but the breeches and shirt he’d briefly lent her, with the buckskin coat. His hair was damp, tied back at his neck. His lean jaw, fresh shaven, had a scrubbed look. His features were a careful mask. He’d heard her prayerful plea. She was sure of it. Had he heard, or seen, anything more?

  “It’s early enough we can reach Jonesborough,” he said through tight lips. “Get the Franklin marrying done today. But first,” he added, and his mouth softened. “I fetched these for you.”

  A petticoat and matching bodice draped his arm. Tamsen, her jaw slackened, came forward, reaching for the garments. They were linen—fine woven, not homespun—died the warm brown of pecans, a lighter shade than the rags she wore. They boasted no adornment. No pearls or lace. But—she raised them to her face—they smelled of lavender and cedar, and they were clean.

  Mr. Bird was watching her. “I thought Janet Allard was about your size. Will they do?”

  Tamsen held the petticoat to her waist. It fell a tad long, but she could tie it high. The sleeves of the bodice cuffed below the elbow, an inch or two long, but it looked to be a passable fit. The garments were so much better than what she’d expected to be married in that it took her a moment to find her voice.

  “Thank you. What made you think to do this?”

  “I saw you in that blue gown, remember?” He gave her a crooked smile. “Though far as I’m concerned, you could drape yourself in sacking and still be pretty as a speckled pup.”

  Speckled. She raised a hand to her cheek. “Have I acquired freckles?”

  “Well …” He pretended to peer at her, then broke into a full grin. “Not nary a one. But I wish you could see yourself, the way you’ve taken the sun. You’ve colored up the prettiest shade of gold.”

  “Mr. Bird …” Heat rose to her cheeks at his open admiration, but something more serious had her crumpling the garments he’d brought her, all but wringing them in sudden nervousness. Was she as olive skinned as her mother now? She touched her fingertips to her face again, then whipped them away as Mr. Bird’s eyes rested on her, questioning.

  She
had to tell him. The last thing she wanted were secrets between them, secrets that might one day come to light and cause her to suffer the way her mother had … because she’d married Mr. Parrish without telling him she’d been a slave.

  That was what her mother must have done. But somehow Mr. Parrish had found out the truth and punished her for it ever since.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Mr. Bird looked mystified. “All right.”

  Praying those words would still be on his lips once she was through, Tamsen closed her eyes and said, “My mother was a slave, Mr. Bird. Papa—my real father, Stephen Littlejohn—freed her, and married her, and to my knowing didn’t tell anyone the truth. I only found out right before …” She clenched her teeth, willing her mind away from that room in Mrs. Brophy’s house. “If this changes your mind about marrying me, I’ll understand.”

  There was the smallest silence before he spoke. “Is that what’s in that box of yours? Something to do with all this?”

  Tamsen nodded, opening her eyes to see him looking at her with the last expression she’d expected, a wry smile.

  “If my own upbringing hasn’t put you off marrying me, then I don’t aim to let your mother’s having been a slave keep me from”—he seemed to change what he’d been about to say—“from doing whatever you need me to do so you feel safe.”

  She worried over that pause. “You’re certain? I mean certain, because this isn’t just about me. I’m doing this for—”

  “I’m certain,” he said with firmness. “But, Tamsen?”

  She waited, her stomach turning flips at the change in his expression. There was warning in his face.

  “Don’t go telling anyone else what you just told me. Leastwise, not in that courthouse we’ll be standing in later today.”

  “But you said you don’t mind it.”

  “That’s not it. I don’t know about Franklin, but North Carolina has laws against some folk marrying on account of things like blood.”

  “Oh.” She felt the biggest fool. It had never once entered her head, those laws against interracial marriage. Of course she’d known they existed, but it wasn’t something she’d ever thought about as having any bearing on herself. Even if Mr. Bird wanted to marry her—and he looked for all the world as if he did—was this going to help the man, repay him for all he’d done for her, or make it worse for him? If Mr. Parrish knew the truth about her, couldn’t he simply declare the marriage illegal once he found them, lay claim to her again, bring that abduction charge against Mr. Bird?