Choices of the Heart (6 page)

“There is no feud,” Griff insisted. “No one’s been hurt in over a year.”

“’Cept you,” Zach murmured. His face twisted as though he were being stabbed.

“And he almost got dead,” Bethann said. “’Cause of you, Zachary Brooks.”

“Bethann,” Griff barked.

She ignored him and leaned over Zach, where he still squatted by the fire. “You stabbed my brother. I found the evidence. Your hair. Your—”

“Bethann.” Griff reached out a hand as though intending to grasp hold of her and draw her away.

She slapped at him. “He may as well know we know the truth and you’re just trying to protect him so’s not to start the fighting again.”

“No.” Griff set his hands on his hips. “I don’t believe it.”

Zach and Hannah remained motionless, silent. Esther glanced from brother to sister. Their eyes were wide, their jaws tense in nearly identical expressions save for a muscle ticking at the corner of Hannah’s jaw and her fingers twisting in front of her.

In the pan, the corn dodgers began to blacken and smoke. Esther dragged the spider off the flames and tipped it over into the dirt. The reek of scorching corn stung her nostrils. Her stomach heaved. She swallowed and returned her attention to the tableau on the far side of the now dying flames.

“What is this all about?” she managed to croak out past a parched tongue and lips.

The four cousins jumped and turned toward her as though they’d forgotten her presence.

“The feud,” Bethann said. “Ever heard of one of those?”

“In Scottish history, yes, but not in Virginia.”

“Told Momma it was a bad idea to bring her out here.” Muttering something else, Bethann tramped to the far side of the clearing and the tethered horses. She began to rummage in a saddlebag.

“Well?” Esther challenged the other three with her eyes. “What’s this all about?”

“I thought Momma told you.” Griff scrubbed his hands over his face. His calloused palms rasped on his day or two growth of beard.

“She should have.” Zach sighed and rose to join Esther. He reached out his hand to her, then let it fall to his side before he touched her. “We had no business bringing you out here without telling you the whole about the feud.”

“It can’t be a true feud.” Pads of bandaging lint seemed to surround Esther. She brushed at her cheeks as though she were pushing them away. She took two deep, slow breaths. “You don’t go to battle or anything, do you? Please tell me no.”

“Do you want the truth or not?” Griff asked, his hands back on his lean hips.

“Truth.” She could barely get out the word.

“Then yea, we do.” Griff cleared his throat. “Yes’m, we did. Fifteen members of four families have died in the past ten years. That’s why our mothers want you here—to learn—to teach the young’uns to grow up civilized.”

“She knowingly brought me into a war?” Esther began to back toward Bethann and the horses.

She might manage to get back to Seabourne, or maybe Charlottesville. That wasn’t far off. She could surely find work there as a serving maid in a tavern, if nothing else. Surely a town with a university would have lots of taverns needing maids to serve. Her parents wouldn’t like it, but they’d like this situation less.

“Mrs. Tolliver wrote there was some roughness up here, but not . . . fighting like that. I thought—” She took another step backward and trod on the overly long hem of her riding habit. It drew her up short. She stood on one foot in an attempt to free herself, tottered—

Zach’s arm around her waist stopped her from falling. “Told you that dress was stupid.”

She shuddered and glared at him, then Griff, then Hannah. “Why didn’t one of you tell me before now?”

“You wouldn’t have come,” Hannah said. “Would you?”

“No. That is—”

If she admitted that she would possibly have done so even once she knew the whole tale, she would be admitting to them how much of a fix she was in at home. She had already let on too much.

“I expect I need to know more about this before drawing a conclusion.” She sounded like her father again.

Griff laughed and grinned at her. “If you don’t run away, I hope you’ll teach me to talk like that. It’ll give me something to confound those mineral factors.”

“She sounds like some kind of uppity—” Hannah’s mouth pinched. “We don’t need to have her kind looking down her nose at us.”

“Her kind is what Momma wants,” Zach said. “And she’s pulled her fair share on this journey, so she’s not that uppity.”

“Nor is she deaf,” Esther interjected. “But she hasn’t heard an explanation yet.”

“Sit down,” Griff directed. “Please.”

Esther obeyed. She wobbled.

Griff poured her a cup of coffee and brought it to her. He squatted, his knees a hairbreadth from hers, and placed the tankard into her hands. Their fingers touched. He could have given her the mug without any contact. The contact was deliberate and lingered a second or two too long.

Esther’s mouth parched like herbs in the oven. Drinking down the coffee in one gulp seemed like a good idea, except she’d scald herself in the process.

She swallowed and drew the cup close to her chest. “I’m listening.”

“And so am I.” Griff spoke in a low voice, a tone too low to carry farther than her ears. “Will you keep talking?”

Esther lifted the mug to her lips in response.

He sighed but did not move away. “This is rough country, you know. We’re all loyal to our families. And sometimes a family member is so offended he just has to fight back. That’s what happened. A man connected with the Brookses did something that offended my relatives and got wounded for it. Then his relatives went after mine for wounding him and killed my older brother . . . And that’s how it starts. But Zach and I took a vow to stop the fighting once and for all. We took it before God and everyone at church.”

“That’s . . . barbaric.” Esther sipped at the coffee to warm her cold insides. “No one right in his reason tries to kill someone. No one kills someone over an insult.”

“They do if the insult’s bad enough.” Griff’s gaze shifted right.

“Not a Christian soul,” Esther persisted.

Hypocrite that she was for invoking the Lord when she had revoked her claims to a relationship with Him months ago.

“We seemed to forget all that.” Zach spoke up for the first time. “’Cept for Griff and me. We listened to the circuit preacher who comes through once a month or so, and we know it’s wrong.”

Both men wore identical expressions of intent sincerity—beautiful blue eyes wide, chins determined—handsome cousins so much alike in looks save for one fair and one dark. Not much older than Esther herself but already bearing lines at the corners of their eyes. Mostly smile lines. Nice, kind young men who deserved the better way of life their mothers wanted for them. That God surely wanted for them.

She was most definitely not right for them. More suited to be that tavern maid, or so they’d think if they knew the truth.

“You won’t come to harm up here with us,” Griff assured her. He rose, brushed his forefinger across her cheek, and moved back before she could shy away.

She gripped the tankard so hard she expected the pewter to bow beneath her hands. She should ask what had started the fighting. If someone had stabbed Griff because of the feud, how safe could an outsider truly be if the fighting broke out again, despite these two scions of the families vowing they would stop it?

She couldn’t form the words. She didn’t want the answers. She must continue on with them. If matters grew dangerous, she would simply leave. She’d learned that lesson well.

Decision made, she rose. “I think we need to get some food prepared and be moving along then.”

“Yea, we do.” Hannah stooped to right the spider and let out a soft cry.

“Hannah?” Esther glanced down at the other woman. “Are you all right?”

Beside the fire, Hannah knelt in the dirt by the ruined dinner. She was cradling one hand with the other. On her palm, flaming red marks warned of blistering to come. “I grabbed the pan without a cloth.” Her voice was a whimper.

“You should have said something.” Esther tossed her cup aside and grasped Hannah’s wrist. “Griff, hand me that bucket of water. Zach, fetch my satchel.”

5

Without taking a moment to consider the consequences of her actions, Esther used the voice her mother had taught her to employ in the birthing chamber: “You need people to jump when you tell them to, not question why, so be authoritative.”

Hannah crouched on the ground, sobbing through her teeth, though without tears, and her face was pale beneath the sun-tinted skin. Esther held her wrist in the water and spoke in the other kind of voice Momma had taught her to employ—the gentle, soothing one, almost like talking to a fractious child, without the exaggerated sweetness people tended to apply to little ones.

“I know it hurts. Burns always do. This will help. Thank you, Zach.” She didn’t raise her voice as he returned with her satchel. “Set that beside me. Griff, fetch some colder water. This is too warm to do much good.”

“Won’t do no good anyhow.” Bethann returned to the gathering around the dying fire. “You need grease on that hand.”

“No, cold water. Griff, please?”

With a nod, he trotted off with the coffeepot, the only large enough container besides the bucket.

“What are you?” Bethann called after him. “Her lapdog?”

Esther’s mouth tightened, but she kept moving Hannah’s hand around in the cool but not icy water.

Perhaps she should ask Bethann to stick her hand in the water to freeze it.

“He’s helping my sister.” Zach set the satchel on the ground beside Esther and flipped up the catch.

She rummaged in the bag with one hand, keeping eye contact with Hannah so she would know if the older woman might swoon at any moment. “I’m going to make a poultice with these herbs. Bethann, will you assist me?”

“Naw. All she needs is a little grease.”

“My mother and I have never believed grease to be helpful for taking away the pain. Later it helps prevent the blisters from breaking, but at first, the colder the water—”

“You’re going to kill her with that, I tell you.” Bethann began to scoop fat from the bacon tin. “I’ve been doctoring my family for years. I know what works and what don’t. Never heard of water for a burn.”

“I’ve used cold water, even ice if it’s available, for years on pa—” Esther shut her mouth and turned her attention to Hannah, her tone a soothing murmur.

“I’ll help you.” Zach shot Bethann a glare, then turned his full attention on Esther, moving closer to her. Too close. His not entirely unpleasant odors of woods, horses, and perspiration filled her nostrils, her brain. Nausea touched her middle, spread as dizziness into her head.

“Please.” Esther took a deep breath. “I need room to work.”

“Sure.” He moved back half a foot.

Not as much as she liked, but better.

“I mix the herbs in the grease,” Bethann persisted.

“That might work.” Esther set the envelope of elderflower leaves on her lap, then reached in to find her comfrey. “But we need that cold water first.”

“Suit yourself. No one listens to me.” Bethann slammed the lid on the bacon tin and stumbled away, looking ill. Beyond a curve in the path, her voice rang out. “You men are fools, and so is she.”

“She knows what she’s doing, that’s clear,” Zach responded.

Bethann grumbled something indistinct, then crashed away.

Another patient for Esther to tend. She should not be this ill.

Except Esther didn’t want to be tending patients. She had left that behind. Yet she couldn’t deny Hannah the care she needed, and Bethann appeared at the end of her strength.

Griff strode into the clearing with only a hitch in his gait to tell of his recent wound. He crouched beside Esther, and she flashed him a quick smile.

“Do, please, pour that water into the bucket. No, wait, let me pour some of this out. Hannah, I’m sorry.” She drew Hannah’s hand from the water.

Hannah hissed in her breath. “I declare the water is helping. It hurts more out of it.”

“Of course it does. These herbs will help, though fresh would be better and aloe would be the best.”

“What’s aloe?” Griff asked.

Concentrating on studying the severity of Hannah’s injury, Esther murmured, “A plant from northern Africa, though it grows all over the world now. It likes warm places, so we always grew a pot on our kitchen window sill.” She plunged Hannah’s hand into the water again. “Just a few more minutes.”

“Why is aloe so good?” Griff pressed.

Esther glanced at him, eyebrows arched.

A dusky hue rose on his cheekbones, and he rubbed his cheeks. “I’m a farmer. Plants interest me.”

Zach shuddered. “I’d rather be on the river.”

“Perhaps you can take the river to someplace warm enough to grow aloe.” Esther made the suggestion as a joke, but the cousins exchanged glances as though she were serious.

“That should do with the water for now.” Esther removed Hannah’s hand from the bucket and sprinkled herbs right onto the skin. “The elderflower smells nice, but the comfrey is like garbage. But nothing heals faster. Zach, hold your sister’s hand while I wrap it.”

He hesitated. “Why would you use something that smells bad to heal?”

“Because it works. Now take it, please.”

“Sure thing.” Zach slipped his hand between Hannah’s and Esther’s, his the size of both theirs together and even more calloused on the palm than Griff’s.

Esther snatched her fingers free and dug in her satchel for a bit of gauze. The burns needed air to heal, but the herbs needed to remain pressed to the skin for several hours. “Griff, you should go look in on your sister. She’s not well.”

“Maybe you should.” He was staring at her as Zach was too—with amazement. “You’re the one with the doctoring skills.”

More than he knew. More than she wanted.

“Men are doctors,” she muttered.

“We don’t got—” Hannah ducked her head. “I mean, we don’t have no—”

“Any,” Zach corrected.

Hannah sighed. “We don’t have any doctors, men or otherwise, where we live. Just Bethann with some herbs and a midwife as old as Mr. Jefferson.”