She cast her gaze farther into the dimmed and flickering shadows, the lofty, straight trunks of hickory, walnut and maple rose to touch the sky, topped by a canopy of meandering fox grape. She regarded him critically. “You may have come from Boston but you are not from Boston. You can’t hide your midlands English accent from me.”
“You are an authority?”
From a hole in a floating log, a slippery muskrat swam out, sat up to inspect them, and then slid into the water. Joshua’s sarcastic tone confirmed he was evading something and she smiled inwardly. Her probing, inflamed an acerbic response. She’d ferret out what he was concealing soon enough.
“I’m from Leicestershire near Lincolnshire. There is a distinct intonation. You can’t change those clipped vowels. Have you been in the Colonies long, Mr. Hansford?”
“Long enough.”
He might deflect with his authoritative tone but she wasn’t fooled for a second. She burst out laughing with her small victory. Oh, to push through that veneer of his.
He took the gun from her and sighted. What magnificent skill he must have to have earned him his reputation. “I will not shoot. The sound might invite trouble. When you get to be an expert, you’ll be able to load the gun four times a minute. In time, I’ll teach you to shoot.”
“What do you do when you are not trapping? Do you have a place to call home?”
“I have a little patch of earth up in the Mohawk Valley with a small cabin. Eventually, I want to farm. The soil is fat and lusty and everywhere a man spits, plants grow. Cherry trees that fruit like clusters of grapes. All sorts of fowls, to take at our pleasure. Nuts as big as eggs. The river flows with lush green grass within the shelter of a mountain.”
Such eloquent descriptions for a fur trapper. And he had the most extraordinary profile she’d ever seen. If she were a portrait artist, she’d define the contours and sharp angles, and capture the light and shadow that made his visage even more handsome. His eyes caught an errant gleam of waxing light, and for a hair’s breadth of a second, she glimpsed pain and stark wrenching anguish before it vanished.
Lies and secrets, they were like a cancer to the soul. They ate away what was good and left destruction. She should know. She was the greatest practitioner of keeping secrets.
She dragged her palms against her gown, trying to scrub away the painful emotions of her past, realizing not once had he answered her question regarding his origins. She had liked the way his voice deepened, telling her of his home in the Mohawk Valley, and it was as if she were seeing what he described. The cabin, snug and warm in the winter, with smoke curling from the chimney. Or cool in the summer, with the door open to catch a breeze. Tall grass waving in the meadow along with dazzling colored wildflowers and a bubbling river to swim through on hot summer days.
“Sounds like paradise,” Juliet whispered. A blue jay darted out from the leafy shore, a flying flash of the sharpest blue, and passed so close Juliet might have reached out her hands to touch it. A place called home elusive as the blue jay. Where did she belong?
Her cousin, a British officer had the power to return her to England. What was there for her? Loneliness? Her heart seized, split amid two domains and at the mercy of fate.
* * *
Joshua skirted the boundaries of their encampment, making sure they were safe although he was assured Two Eagles had already performed the task. Juliet stifled a yawn as they entered their camp. He imagined her craving a month of sleep from her ordeal.
“Where have you been?” said Mary, her manner accusing Juliet of desertion. “I was alone with—”
“He won’t eat you if that is what you think, Mary.” Joshua chuckled and set down his gun while Two Eagles unwound the sinews binding the fur packs, snapped out a large bearskin, and made a bed on the ground. Joshua was weary, his leg ached, but he’d not get a wink of sleep with two skittish females and the sleeping arrangements. “Juliet, tell me more of your life in England.”
“Why?”
She placed her hand on her gold cross. A movement he’d come to realize as a defensive gesture. “There’s nothing interesting.”
“Try me.” He narrowed his eyes on her and she turned away, removing corn cakes and salty deer jerky, setting the meal on a stump for everyone to sup. She offered him a piece of jerky, and he refused to release her hand.
Mary gave a disgusted snort. “Since she won’t speak, I’ll speak for her. She is really Lady Juliet Faulkner. Her father was Baron John Faulkner.”
Juliet glared at her friend.
“Lady Juliet Faulkner?” He dropped her hand. She had said her full name during the wedding ceremony and he’d paid no special attention, yet it was beyond his wildest imagination, she was the daughter of Baron Faulkner.
“And you were going to tell me this fact, when?” His father had purchased an obsidian-black Arabian from Baron Faulkner, a lesser baron from the northeast of Derby County and renowned for his horses.
Juliet lifted her shoulders. “My title certainly makes no difference. My father died. My uncle took over the baronetcy.”
Mary plunked her fists on her hips. “What she didn’t tell you was when her father died, his younger brother was quick to seize the baronetcy, appropriating all tenements, lands, monies, rents, freehold profits and manor. Except for a small broken-down cottage, nothing had been provided for her by her father. Not that that was any surprise.”
“I’m warning you, Mary.”
Joshua was getting a vague idea of Juliet, yet there was more to her story. “How does a gently-reared noblewoman learn midwife skills?”
“I learned from Moira. She was a midwife.”
