The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (7 page)

“Still?” A stab of guilt deflated her pride. She hadn’t spared the horse a thought since her flight was curtailed. The man’s mouth twisted, sparking her to add, “I’d have checked had I not been interrupted.”

“I checked. It’d be plain cruel to ride her again inside a week. Whatever your scheme was, reckon it’s good I interrupted it.”

“Good?”

“For your horse. She needs time to heal. Time to herself, to recover.”

It was disconcerting the way those golden eyes looked straight into
hers as he spoke. He was still talking about the horse, wasn’t he? Only
time
was the very thing she desperately needed. Her stomach rolled, thinking of what was yet to come that day. Another meeting with Mr. Kincaid, if her stepfather arranged it. Even if not, there would be some other rich prospect eventually. Another sprawling plantation, worked by more men and women bound to servitude than Mr. Parrish could hope to own in a lifetime.

The man in the stall had crouched to fold up the oilskin bundle where he’d put her cloak. “Where’d you aim to go,” he asked, “had you got away?”

“I hadn’t thought that far.” To whom could she have fled? There was no one in the world she trusted who wasn’t under her stepfather’s influence. No place of refuge. Nowhere to hide.

She’d never felt so great a fool. Maybe she ought to be grateful for this interfering—

“Then tell me this.” Crouched still, he looked up at her, balanced on the balls of his feet. “What’s gone so amiss for that blossom-eyed girl I saw yesterday, the one all decked in blue, that riding off alone in the night seems a better prospect than sticking with her kin?”

For all it was gently voiced, the question cut a swath across her heart. “I see myself becoming my mother,” she whispered.

“Is that the worst thing you can imagine?”

Why she should think so was beyond her, but Tamsen sensed the man knew more of her situation than she’d revealed—and that he’d help her, if she asked. The impulse to do so swept over her in a dizzying rush. His sharp eyes must have seen it. A hand, big, soiled from mucking, rose as if he meant to take hold of hers.

Tamsen stepped back, cloak clutched to her chest, fingers digging into the wool. She could never ask this man for help. What could he possibly do for her? Frustration and despair surged up, and there was nowhere else to vent it.

“Why did you have to interfere?”

He unfolded his tall self with a dignity she hadn’t suspected he possessed. “To spare your poor horse. If you lack the sense to consider the needs of those that serve you, reckon someone has to step up and do it in your stead.”

The indictment stung. That this uncouth, rustic white
savage
had the audacity to reproach her with the very shortcoming she’d laid at the feet of Ambrose Kincaid—

“How dare you say such a thing to me?”

“Well, now. I’ve faced down charging bears and starving wolves and murdering Chickamaugas. Reckon the pique of a pretty miss ain’t like to daunt me.” Those striking amber eyes twinkled—with laughter.

Tamsen had no memory of whirling on her heel and exiting the stall. So complete was her fury at his impudence, his unfairness, not a single thought of her stepfather, the blue gown, or Ambrose Kincaid crossed her mind for the half minute it took her to reach Mrs. Brophy’s back door.

Torn betwixt amusement at the girl and regret for her unhappiness, Jesse Bird went back to shoveling dung. He’d only meant to tease, not offend, but had to admit the snap in her dark eyes before she’d flounced out of the stable had set his blood to racing. Fragile as a broom twig she might look, but she had spirit, and boldness to speak her mind—to him at least.

Tamsen Littlejohn
. He’d gotten her full name out of Sim, and that of her stepfather, Parrish. He knew they’d come from Charlotte Town so the girl might secure herself a bridegroom, a planter from Virginia besotted by a portrait of her he’d seen. And he knew Tamsen hadn’t taken to the man, even with riches to sweeten the pie.

’Course she hadn’t
, Jesse thought, piling the last of the manure into the cart. Back on the trace he’d told Catches Bears and Thunder-Going he’d know
the one
when he found her. He’d said it to hush their fool talk about White Shell, was all. Twice now he’d seen Tamsen Littlejohn to talk to. Neither conversation had ended well. Still he couldn’t shake what he’d sensed at that first meeting of their eyes. Tamsen Littlejohn just might be the woman the Almighty intended for him.

Jesse wheeled the cart outside. In the yard behind the trade store, he spotted Cade, talking with the clerk and three men he took on sight for poor farmers with big dreams of Overmountain land, looking for a guide to take them west.

Cade nodded him over.

Jesse paused at a rain barrel to wash, wiped his hands on his shirttail, and strode over to the men. He shook hands and set names to memory,
marking the one who put himself forward as leader of the trio, each head of a family, with stock and canvased wagons camped outside of town.

Jesse knew his part. He was the white face, the one to ease whatever qualms settlers had in putting their safety in the hands of a man who looked too much like the Chickamaugas they feared. Sure as sunrise, once Jesse made it clear he’d be along for the crossing, their wary faces eased. The lead man voiced his intention of settling along the Nolichucky.

“Hear tell General Sevier’s got himself a brand-new state yonder. The State of Franklin.”

“The back country is in a state,” said the store clerk. “Though whether it ought to be called Franklin or the Great Divide, I’ll leave it to you folk to reckon. Politics runs high t’ other side o’ these mountains.”

Jesse watched their faces as the clerk described the situation Overmountain, where many of the leading men like John Sevier had formed a separate state after North Carolina ceded her western lands to the Union three years back, not knowing till after they’d set up the Franklin government and shaken hands and signed their names that the General Assembly had snatched back those lands in a repeal of the cession. Now everyone’s hackles were up, and neither side was backing down in their say on who should claim, protect—and tax—the Watauga settlers. North Carolina or Franklin. Old State or New State.

“God alone knows where the confusion will end,” the clerk said. “A man might do better going right on through the Cumberland Gap, follow Boone and his lot up into Kan-tuck-ee.”

“What of the Shawnees up along the Ohio?” the lead man asked. “We hear tell that’s a bloodier ground by far.”

Cade and Jesse exchanged a glance. “If you’re fretted over Indians, you’d best keep east of the mountains,” Cade said. “Forting up from time to time, having a crop or a cabin burnt, that’s going to be a way of life once you cross over.”

Jesse knew Cade didn’t like seeing so many settlers heading west,
filling up the coves where the Cherokees and Shawnees once hunted. But settlers were coming whether he liked it or not. What bothered Cade more were tales of women and children scalped in the passes before ever setting foot on the land where they hoped to prosper.

Movement glimpsed sidelong made Jesse turn to see Sim outside the stable, with him a dark-skinned woman he recognized as Parrish’s maid. The two had their heads together. The woman cast a glance toward the Brophy house, where Tamsen was staying. Sim looked toward the store yard, catching Jesse’s eye. Taking hold of the maid’s arm, Sim drew her inside the stable.

Jesse knew the look of two people conspiring. Over what, he couldn’t say. Much was amiss in that household.

“Mata-howesha,”
he murmured.

“What isn’t good, Jesse?” Cade’s Shawnee was still as fluent as his own, but Jesse shook his head, thinking it best he held his tongue—in any language.

The settlers were saying they’d wait and see the lay of the land and decide whether they meant to file a claim on the Nolichucky or head to Kentucky instead. “All we’re asking of you is to get us over safe,” he said, nodding toward the blue rise of foothills to the northwest. “Help us keep our scalps and stock and young’uns along the way. You swear to that and we’ll talk about compensation.”

“I can avow,” the store clerk said, “not a man, woman, or puppy dog has regretted placing their lives in the hands of Cade and Jesse Bird.”

The light slanting through the window heralded sunset; still Mr. Parrish had not returned. With pins and combs and the hot iron, Dell had swept back Tamsen’s heavy curls and tamed them into ringlets, secured at the crown with a lace pinner in place of a cap, to show off more of her
handiwork. Tamsen was dressed to stays and petticoat, hose and heeled silk shoes but didn’t want to don the blue gown until certain a meeting would take place.

“Dell, I think ’tis time. Why don’t you go on out to Sim?”

Tamsen turned from pacing the room to stare at her mother, dressed in nutmeg silk, then at Dell, who’d just set the cooling iron on the hearth. She’d heard her mother dismiss their maid after a thousand hair dressings, yet never in such a manner.
Go on out to Sim?
And what did that sorrowing look coming over Dell’s face signify?

“Go now,” Sarah Parrish said. “If this is still what you want.”

“Miss Sarah … thank you.” Dell cast her mother an anguished look, then hurried from the room, tears spilling down her brown cheeks.

Tamsen stared after her. “Mama, what’s upset Dell?”

Her mother was inspecting the blue gown, hung from one of the bedposts, though there couldn’t be a crease left hiding in its folds. “Never mind Dell. ’Tis you we must speak of now. I’ve been informed of what you tried to do last night.”

Tamsen sank onto the foot of the bed, twisting her fingers together. “I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Another lie. She’d let desperation drive her to attempt something that, had it succeeded, would have haunted her the rest of her days. Abandoning her mother. Yet remorse ran countercurrent to resentment at being trapped by the person she loved best in the world.

Her voice shook as she asked, “Does
he
know?”

“You’d know if he did. Sim was circumspect.”

More so than she’d been, apparently. Her mother had been unusually silent the day long. Tamsen, stewing in her misery, had left her to Dell’s company, the pair often whispering together. About what?

“And there is no need to tell me you are sorry. ’Tis I should be saying that to you.”

Tamsen frowned at the back of her mother’s neck, at the coil of black
hair swept up sleek and elegant, the crown of it decorously covered. “What do you mean, Mama? What are you sorry for?”

“For every choice I’ve made since the day your father died. For standing by while Mr. Parrish has done all in his power to see you make the same choices.” Despite her words, Tamsen’s mother turned with her beautiful face serenely calm. “There is one thing more on the subject of Mr. Kincaid I need to ask you, Tamsen. Have you considered there is occasion for you to do great good in all of this, in marrying that man?”

“Good for whom?”

“For Mr. Kincaid’s people. They will have a mistress eventually, and there are far less kind ones than you would make. Your presence in his house could mean all the difference in their lives. That is no small thing to which to devote oneself.”

Tamsen had begun shaking her head before her mother finished speaking. “If that’s what you think, Mama, then answer me this. Did marrying you make a difference in how Mr. Parrish treats his slaves?”
Look how he treats us
, she wanted to scream.

Her mother must have plucked those stillborn words from the air and taken them to heart. Her face drained of color, yet it held its resolve. Moving as if in a daze, she drew Tamsen to the chairs by the hearth. Her hands were cold.

“Not a blessed difference,” she said, with a conviction all the more startling for its suddenness. “Still, Mr. Kincaid may prove more open to influence. Aren’t you willing to give him that chance?”

“Not unless I’m forced to it. Mama, is there a way out of this? If Mr. Parrish doesn’t know I tried to run away, maybe
we
could try … together?”