The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (5 page)

“Milch cow?” Jesse halted between an oak-shaded frame house and the trade store, where the beaten path between met the town’s main street. “You take up courting some woman without telling me? She got you flirting with the notion of settling down?”

A pace ahead, Cade stopped his horse and said something to that, but Jesse never heard his answer, since that was the moment he saw the girl in the blue gown.

She was crossing the lane where they’d halted, moving fast and looking straight ahead, heedless of left or right—till her stride hitched like she’d put a fancy heel down wrong and she staggered smack into Cade. She’d have gone sprawling over those yards of silk petticoat had Cade not loosed his horse and snaked an arm around her slender waist to catch her.

Jesse caught the horse as Cade released the girl—a dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty, dressed finer than any female he’d ever set eyes on. Next to him and Cade, both topping six feet, she seemed as neat and tiny as a doll, and somehow not quite real.

“I—I beg your pardon,” she said, not how Jesse expected such a girl
would speak to a trail-begrimed stranger in buckskins who dared put his hands on her person. More like she meant it.

She looked up at Cade, and her eyes rounded. Then she looked at Jesse, who promptly forgot everything else about the girl save what was staring from her eyes—fury, fear, resolve, all in a stunning flash as real and raw as the earth beneath his moccasins and the sun beating on his back.

A shout rose from the direction she’d appeared. “Tamsen!”

The girl flinched. Breaking their gaze, she swept up her skirts and was across the lane in a blink, making for the house next door. Jesse watched her mount the steps, fumble at the door, and vanish in a swirl of blue. He barely registered the glowering man that hurried past and followed her inside. Behind the door a shout rumbled through the walls of the house to worry the street like distant thunder.

Jesse had dropped both horses’ reins to gape. “Did you …? Have you ever …?”

Cade fetched the reins and looked down his long nose, taking full advantage of the inch of height he had on Jesse. “Did I? Have I? All that book learning I got you, and you can’t find a single word to describe a chit of a girl?”

“A chit of a …? Did you
see
her?”

“I saw a fancy gown, a pretty face. What’d you see?” Cade’s eyes danced with amusement. “Give me
words
, boy. Or did she knock ’em clean out of your head?”

She doth teach the torches to burn bright
.

Not a chance he’d stitched such words together of his own wits. He must have read them somewhere. But if he spouted them now, Cade would think him addled, right enough. What, then, could he say? He’d read himself a heap of books, and the Good Book twice through, but heaven help him could he call to mind another phrase better fitting what he’d just seen. Or thought he’d seen.
Could
you glimpse a woman’s soul with one look into her eyes?

“Never mind,” he said, still sounding pole-axed to his own ears. “Weren’t we talking ’bout cows … or corn?”

While her stepfather raged and her mother pleaded, Tamsen huddled in the parlor bed with a door shut between, pouring out her misery and resentment into the muffling pillow. On a pallet by the fire, Dell prayed, calling on the Almighty and His angels to hold her stepfather in check.

They’d never heard him quite this angry.

It was near dark before the front door slammed. Mrs. Brophy’s house shuddered with the silence. Moments later her mother entered the parlor. Candlelight wavered, steadied. Tamsen feigned sleep, listening as Dell rose to the nightly ritual of removing her mother’s gown and stays and brushing out her thick black hair.

“Law, Miss Sarah,” the maid hissed through her teeth. “Look what he done to—”

“Hush, Dell.”

“But he never—”

“The gown tore when I tried to pull from his grasp. That is all.”

“He sounded terrible worked up,” Dell ventured after a moment. “Ain’t laid a hand on you nowhere?”

“Thank the Lord, no. Now hush.”

Eventually the candle was snuffed and the bed tick sagged beneath her mother’s slender weight. Tamsen faced the wall, holding herself rigid. Her heart thumped ten slow beats before reaching fingers curled around her shoulder. A smell almost of cinnamon—her mother’s smell—filled her next breath. She knew what was coming.

The sense of betrayal choked like bile.

“Tamsen … please. Won’t you give Mr. Kincaid another chance? He
was so taken with you.” Her mother stroked the tear-wet hair back from her face. “Mr. Parrish says he was set to propose when …”

When he showed his true nature
, Tamsen wanted to say. A nature as mercurial as her stepfather’s. Only difference being, Mr. Kincaid possessed a veneer of charm, something her stepfather lacked entirely. But charm was deceitful, and despite what the man said of her better nature, his reaction to her beauty had made her vain enough to
be
deceived. Nearly.

“Mr. Parrish means to smooth things over,” her mother said into the dampness of her hair. “Convince Mr. Kincaid to see you again.”

Tamsen pictured her stepfather out in the night entreating the man, making excuses, promising all manner of reform to her behavior. She was young. She was malleable. Mr. Kincaid could make of her what he wished, once the union was legal. Hezekiah Parrish wouldn’t scruple to interfere with his methods, however stiffly they be meted.

And here was her mother, cowed into persuading her it was something for which she ought to be glad. It was all Tamsen could do to bear her touch, her pleading breath.

“Tamsen?

Swallowing back the gorge of humiliation and fury, Tamsen said what she knew she must, though the words came out stiff as whale boning. “All right, Mama.”

Sarah Parrish pressed a kiss behind her ear and retreated to her side of the bed. Tamsen heard the tiniest of shuddering sighs. Resentment cooled enough for concern to thread its way in. She turned in the bed. “Did he do more than shout at you, Mama?”

The hesitation lasted a breath too long. “I’m fine, Tamsen. Don’t worry for me.”

Tamsen rolled away and lay in darkness. Listening. Waiting. Begging the Almighty to forgive her for what she was about to do. Had to do. She could bear a lot of things, she’d decided, but ending up like her mother,
crushed and caged in a life too miserable and loveless for words, wasn’t one of them.

An hour passed, best she could judge. Mr. Parrish didn’t return. Nor did Mrs. Brophy, who kept her customers’ late hours. Not until she was certain her mother and Dell both slept did Tamsen begin the measured process of easing from the bed, taking up the bundle she’d hidden at its foot, and slipping out of the room, out of the house, out of the yard.

If there was to prove a hitch in her plan, it would involve the horse. As had her stepfather, Tamsen had ridden to Morganton rather than endure the jouncing wagon ride with her mother, Dell, and Sim, but less than a mile from their destination, her mare had gone footsore. Not badly, and Sim would have seen to it in the days since. She hoped the mare had had time to heal. She also hoped wherever Sim slept, it wasn’t in the stall box.

The large public stable spanned the yard behind the trade store, next door to Mrs. Brophy’s house. The night was moonless. With her eyes still growing accustomed to the darkness, Tamsen felt her way past the stable’s unlatched door.

Outside the air had been clammy, cool after a warm day, but the thick scents of hay and manure enveloped her as she passed the stabled mounts of Morganton residents, and of those just passing through, the air on her face warm with the heat of so much horseflesh. Snorts and shufflings followed her along the row. She found her dappled mare in the last stall but one. The horse’s nose thrust over the gate, nudging Tamsen’s reaching hand.

“It’s me, sweet girl,” she said, just above a whisper. With one hand she fondled the mare’s nose, with the other groped for the sidesaddle she hoped was close to hand. The bridle and reins were there, hanging from a post,
but not the saddle. She felt along the gate of the empty box at the end, peering within to see if it contained what she sought. The box was black as pitch. She banged a knee against the boards and froze, heart slamming. Sim had to be somewhere near. In the loft above?

The mare nickered. Tamsen hurried back and grasped the horse’s head between soothing hands. “Hush now. We have to be quiet.”

And quick. She hadn’t wanted to risk dressing in the house. She’d brought the rust-brown linen petticoat and matching jacket worn on the journey to Morganton, bundled in a summer riding cloak. She opened the mare’s box, set the bundle on trampled straw, and dressed clumsily in the dark. She bent for the cloak to shake it free of straw. When she straightened, a man stood in the half-open box gate.

Tamsen jumped back, dropping the cloak, startling the mare. The figure, tall and featureless, loomed closer. A hand clamped her arm.

“They’re liable to hang horse thieves in these parts.”

It wasn’t Mr. Parrish. That brought a flare of relief, despite her heart’s crazed hammering. For a second she thought it was Ambrose Kincaid, but the voice was too deep—and too unrefined. She found her voice in a rush of outrage. “I’m no thief—release me!”

“Give me good reason,” said the man, sounding, of all things, amused. His grip sent panic coursing through her.

“You’re hurting me!” He was, but only because she fought his grasp. He was strong, and he smelled of horses and dressed hides, and since she couldn’t break his hold, she stopped struggling. He relaxed his grip.

“All right, then. If you’re not set on thieving, what’d you aim to do with this fine mare?”

“Who are you, Mrs. Brophy’s stable guard?” She’d edged her voice with mockery, keeping fear and desperation at bay. Whoever this interloper was, he was dangerously nigh to ruining her escape—one she was already starting to regret—but that wasn’t the salient point just now.

Tamsen stepped back, nearly tripping over the cloak tangled at her feet.

The man caught her again and set her to rights as if he could see perfectly well in the dark. He made no effort to curb his voice. “I guard what’s mine and Cade’s. Not everyone sneaking ’round in the dark is to be trusted, are they?”

Tamsen reached for calm. “Please, keep your voice down or—”

“Miz Tamsen? That you making a racket?” Sim emerged from the shadows.

“Tamsen?” echoed the interloper, the spoiler of her plan.

“Sim … yes, it’s all right,” she said, thankful for the darkness when she felt the burn of helpless tears. “I-I heard something in the stable and … Where did you come from?”

“Mast’ Parrish got me sleeping in the loft. But I didn’t hear nothin’ save you tromping about.”

“Go on back to sleep, then.”
And forget you saw me
, she added silently. Precious time was ticking past. Oh, what was she even doing here? What had she been thinking?

Sim hadn’t budged. “You sure you all right?”

Tamsen, better able to see now, caught the glint of his eyes. He was glaring at the stranger. “I’m sure. Now go before—”

“Who is there?” a voice called down the stable’s length. The voice she’d dreaded to hear.

“Go,” she hissed.

Sim went, scurrying up the loft ladder, sending down a sifting of hay as light spilled through the stable door.