The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (51 page)

Ambrose’s gaze shifted from Jesse to Cade. He leaned forward in the chair, expression braced. “So it is true, then. My father started the fire?”

Cade’s eyes answered, even before he added, “Covering … the murders.”

Jesse felt a moment’s pity for Ambrose as something in the man’s face shattered.

“I’d dared to hope … but I knew him too well, too long. Did you see it done?”

“I was … running traps … came home to ashes.” Cade’s eyes found Jesse again. “I combed that cabin … every cinder … every bone. You weren’t there.”

“But you found the tracks,” Jesse said. “The tracks of the Shawnees that came on the scene, who took me. That’s why you came to Cornstalk’s Town and ran the gauntlet, became Shawnee? For me?”

“For you … for Bryan. He gave me freedom.”

Of course. Ambrose had just told him Cade—or Theo—had been born to a slave. That would have made Cade a slave too. Bryan had given his half brother his freedom, as well as friendship. “How’d you know it was Collin who killed them if you weren’t there to see it?”

“You know this part,” Cade reminded him. “Shawnees … told of the
man … what he did before they found you. By their words I knew him. I wanted to find him … kill him. But couldn’t risk … losing you again. So I stayed with you at Cornstalk’s Town.”

Jesse tried to hold back the question, but it broke free. “Why didn’t you tell me this years ago? After we left the Shawnees. You could’ve told me then.”

The pain in Cade’s eyes deepened. “Remember … after we fled the Long Knife hunters, you broke your leg? I left you with those settlers …”

“I mind it.” He’d been out of his head with pain and grief, thinking the warrior he knew as Wolf-Alone had abandoned him to white strangers. It had been a week, at most, then Wolf-Alone returned, calling himself Cade.

Kincaid
. “You took on your father’s name? Why? Why after everything?”

“It was … Bryan’s name too.” Cade paused, swallowed, went on. “When I left you with the Birds, I went to Long Meadows … Needed to know … did Collin live? Could he learn of us … hunt us down?”

“To cover his murders, like my stepfather tried to do,” Tamsen said.

Cade met her gaze, understanding passing between them. “I saw him … drunk in the stable. By then … I pitied him. I let him be.”

Ambrose gave an ungentlemanly snort. “I cannot begin to guess how many times Grandfather and I found him so. Collin Kincaid cast his shadow over every soul he touched.”

“Yet he sired a son … with a good heart.”

Cade’s words took Ambrose by evident surprise. And pleasure.

Jesse frowned, unsure he was willing to extend such favor to the man. “Was keeping shed of Collin Kincaid the only reason you didn’t tell me?”

Cade shook his head. “I was waiting.”

“For what?”

“To see the man you’d make. A man who could forgive … or one to seek revenge.”

“You saying I’m come up short?”

Cade’s eyes took on a sheen. “You are your father’s son,” he said, with such pride in his exhausted gaze that Jesse couldn’t speak a word past the tightening in his throat. “If I was wrong … holding the truth this long …”

“You made the right choice, Uncle Theo.”

Jesse glanced at Ambrose, startled, then annoyed, at the familiar address. It rankled, like having his hair rubbed against the grain. It felt like …

Of all things. He was jealous of the man. Jealous of his having genuine claim on Cade, and Tamsen too—not because of some misguided obsession with her, but on account of
him
, his own blood that linked them.

With his next breath, he knew the foolishness of such thinking and saw instead another hand at work, one that had been weaving their paths for good. Not just Tamsen’s and his. Cade’s. Ambrose’s too. Even that unknown grandfather for whom he was some sort of namesake. That man who’d lost his sons, one to murder, one to drink and darkness. And a third son, born a slave, whose fate remained to him unknown.

“And I suspect,” Ambrose continued, still addressing Cade, “you’ve been thinking all these months I’d picked up where my father left off. That I was bent on a like persecution, pursuing you all as I’ve done.”

“I was wrong.” Cade closed his eyes, beyond exhausted now. “I pray there’s time … for both of you … to forgive me.”

“No.” Tears were starting, but Jesse didn’t care. “I don’t need time. He’s right, is Ambrose. You’d reason enough not to tell me. You were trying to protect me, like you’ve always done. Tamsen too, because I chose her, love her. And even if you are my uncle, I mean to go on calling you Pa. If that’s all right.”

A breath went out of Cade’s parted lips, curving them in the faintest of smiles. But he didn’t speak, and for another wrenching moment, Jesse feared he was that quickly gone.

But he only slept.

The day passed over them, and the snow fell, but whatever lingering concern with the Franklin skirmish that might have troubled the Tipton household was kept at arm’s length by Ambrose Kincaid, who came and went throughout the day, making sure their needs were met. The rest of the battle wounded had been removed by kin, leaving Tamsen, Cade, and Jesse in relative solitude in the small parlor while the house was put back in order. They were offered food. Bandages and dressings were changed. Cade slept, woke, talked a little, slept and woke again. Though he mightn’t have realized it yet, Tamsen could see that with each waking, the spark of life in him stretched taller, greedy as a candle flame reaching for the air that sustains it.

That air was Jesse, his brother’s son. His son, in all the ways that mattered. In the silence of her heart, Tamsen pondered all she’d seen and heard and was certain what had turned the tide between life and death for Cade had been Jesse’s swift forgiveness, his love. Aiding to a lesser degree—one of the greatest ironies she’d ever witnessed—was the presence of Ambrose Kincaid.

Watching them from across the room—Cade propped now on a bolster, Jesse and Ambrose seated on the floor beside his pallet—she could almost see the bond of kinship widening to embrace one until this day counted an enemy, as together Cade and Ambrose wove a picture for Jesse of his heritage. And as the shock of revelation gave way to acceptance, Jesse drank it in and asked for more, until the cup of his past was spilling over.

Tamsen watched, and she pondered, and the image that kept coming to her was that of a young woman’s brown hands weaving … weaving
many-colored canes into a basket that was really two baskets, just as their identities—hers and Jesse’s—had proved to be two, one nestled inside the other, joined by the skillful hands of the Master Weaver.

Finally her wounded men both slept, and Ambrose left them for a time. A few tapers added to the fire’s glow pushed back the shadows of dusk-fall to the corners, filling the room with the honeyed scent of beeswax. Sound in body and with much to occupy her mind, Tamsen remained wakeful. Thus it was to her that Ambrose came the final time, greatcoat slung over his arm in anticipation of departure, to talk about the land that once belonged to Bryan Kincaid, which had precipitated his journey to Morganton, and their meeting.

“ ’Tis your husband’s land by right,” he told her, looking at her with eyes that, while no longer dazzled, held a lingering regret. “Send word to me at Long Meadows, when the time is right. We’ll meet in Morganton to settle the deed. For now, here’s something that belongs to you.”

Standing there in the clothes she’d made in Thunder-Going’s town, still bearing darkened bloodstains, Tamsen took from him what he withdrew from beneath his coat. Her mother’s box. She breathed out in relief and nodded her thanks. Then frowned. The leather whangs that had held it shut were gone. Her eyes sought his, asking whether he knew of its contents.

“The Trimbles had it among their kit. It took a spill as I was apprehending them.” He’d seen and understood what it had held, his gaze told her. “Can you believe it wouldn’t have mattered, had I known from the beginning?”

The box tilted in her grasp, emitting the soft clink of coins. Even that he had preserved for her. “That my mother was a slave? I don’t know you well enough yet to say, but I believe you a more honorable man than I once credited you with being.”

Though never a man she would choose to marry—not when there was such a man in the world as Jesse Bird. Or would he be Alex Kincaid after today? Or simply Wildcat?

With love and satisfaction swelling beneath her breastbone, she gazed at her husband, asleep beside his foster father, whose name was as much in question at present as that of the orphaned nephew he’d devoted himself to raising. Whatever name Jesse chose, he was hers, and she his, and what God had joined together, no man—kin or otherwise—would ever put asunder.

“Before I take my leave,” Ambrose ventured, “might I request the privilege of paying a visit on your behalf to Charlotte Town, to whatever persons might claim Hezekiah Parrish as next of kin?”

He had her full attention again.

“With the intent,” he added, seeing her questioning look, “of setting right certain misconceptions concerning the death of your mother. It is the least that I can do for you, if you will permit it.” Ambrose settled his hat upon his head, dimming the blaze of his hair in the taper-light. “I ask because I know Grandfather will have his own ideas of what to do, once he’s heard the tale in full. For all that he’s nearing eighty, he is not a man to suffer lightly the slings and arrows cast against those he holds dear.”

Nor, Tamsen was quite sure, was his grandson and heir, who made her a bow and reached for the door. “You have my permission. But will you tell your grandfather the truth about the fire?”

Ambrose hesitated, turning to her with bruised, weary eyes. “Perhaps not at once, aside from the fact that Theo and Bryan’s son are found. What I intend to do is set right my father’s wrongs—and your stepfather’s—as far as they can be.” His gaze on her warmed. “Now a certain pair of horse thieves and I have miles to ride before we lodge this night. I bid you farewell, Mrs. Bird.”

“Farewell for now … Cousin,” she said to his departing back. “God speed you safely home.”

Surprised by the address, Ambrose Kincaid turned back again, this time smiling.

He left her with his words full in her heart and the image of an old
man she had never met rising up to her defense. She had lost a mother and would mourn her yet awhile and miss her always. But she’d gained a husband, and with him, a father. Now a cousin and that distant, shadowy figure of a grandfather. And before next winter’s snow fell, there would be another to bind their hearts and blood together, God willing.

With a hand spread across the place where Jesse’s child was cradled, she shut the door, crossed to her husband, and settled on the quilt beside him, setting aside her mother’s box, smiling with her secret. She meant to tell Jesse when he woke, thinking it would be some hours yet, but he stirred now, turning toward her those features sharp and clear as a hawk’s. He reached for her, voice rasped with sleep and lingering pain.

“He’s gone?”

“Just now,” she said, softly so as not to awaken Cade.

Jesse was silent, watching her face, mouth curving in response to the joy she couldn’t suppress. “Is that why you’re smiling?”

“No,” she said, and bent to kiss the bridge of his nose. “But if you promise to go back to sleep right after, I’ll tell you why.”