Ma’s mouth formed a solemn, wordless line as she watched her beloved son ride away. And Tessa wondered, did Ma quietly frame him in her head and heart in case it might be her last sight of him alive?
They returned to their simple tasks within fort walls, the same stroke of uncertainty beneath all they did. Hester read aloud from an old Virginia Gazette as if to distract them from their cares.
“Well, wonders never cease.” She raised her monocle and peered at the paper. “Just listen to this. ‘A newly invented instrument for knitted, knotted, double-looped work, to make stockings, breeches pieces, or silk gloves, cotton or worsted.’”
“A knitting-machine frame?” Ma shook her head. “I’ll take my two hands, thank you.”
Tessa’s own knitting needles flew, her face turned to the window to catch a cooling breeze. To rest her eyes, she sometimes paused and looked out the window. The fort’s activity was never dull, its commander never idle.
Even now Clay walked with a purpose as he left the blockhouse, stooping to the humble chore of redding up the common as he walked. He spent a fair amount of time with Ruth’s blacksmith father at the smithy, where the ring of the hammer and the hiss of the quenching bucket never ceased, though he seemed most preoccupied with the magazine, the garrison’s precious store of gunpowder. Her brothers accompanied him at times as they examined this or that. All watched the gates as if anticipating the return of the spies.
An afternoon at the window had gained more gawking than knitting. An unfinished pair of stockings was proof. Tessa hid them in the basket she’d brought from home. She rubbed her neck, stiff from looking sideways so long.
As the sun sank behind the westernmost trees, Hester prepared stew for supper, the kettle a-simmer with wild onions, potatoes, and leftover meat from the frolic.
“Set out nine bowls and spoons,” Hester told her. “Then make extra cornbread.”
Glad for another task, Tessa emptied the cupboard of dishes, then went about making batter from the corn Keturah had ground.
“Serve those persimmon preserves I’ve been saving for company. The pickles and head cheese too.”
Company meant more than Keturah, likely. With Lemuel gone, she counted eight at supper. Was the extra place, the head of the table, reserved for the colonel?
Time soon told. Changing out of her grease-spackled apron for a clean, cambric one of Hester’s, Tessa noticed her great-aunt didn’t squawk at her borrowing as she sometimes did. The mirror’s cracked reflection had her repinning her flyaway hair and cap, the ruffled edge as ragged as she herself felt. Closing her eyes, she found her thoughts full of a fragmented verse.
Strength and honor are her clothing . . . she shall rejoice in time to come.
’Twas one of Ma’s beloved Scriptures, oft spoken at wit’s end when heartache and uncertainty pressed in. To remember it now seemed to renew her courage, straighten her shoulders. She wasn’t fancy, but she had the Bible to bolster her. She would be a woman of strength and honor, however humble.
When Clay appeared in the cabin’s open door, holding something behind his back and looking cleaned up, her insides did a little dance. He greeted her mother and Hester, saying something in both Lenape and English to Keturah, who responded in kind.
“Miss Swan.” His voice turned her away from the looking glass.
Had he seen her preening? How like her mother she sounded with her formal words, “Colonel Tygart, do come in.”
The women around them stayed busy while Tessa crossed the distance, hating the fire he’d raised on her face. She wished her brothers would come tumbling in.
“What have you behind your back?” she asked him.
His gaze lit with mischief. “Guess.”
She drew back a bit. “I’m used to men—boys—hiding things. Snakes and toads and the like.”
He chuckled, stepping aside as Zadock entered. “A small gift for the Spinster Swan.”
The teasing in his tone tickled her. “Give me a hint, aye?”
He paused, a small scar she hadn’t noticed before stealing her attention. It ran like a whipstitch beneath his blue eye. This close she saw that he had especially long, dark lashes, maybe even longer than her own.
He held out a small, brown-skinned book. Maddie had told him of her hankering to read, then. Could he tell she was glad to the heart?
“Does poetry suit you?” He regarded her intently as if ready to return to Philadelphia or at least the blockhouse for something else instead.
“Aye, though I’ve had little of it.” Taking the offering, she clutched the book to her chest. “I’ve yet to meet a borderman with poetry in his soul.”
“A few words, aye. ‘Beside some water’s rushy brink with me the Muse shall sit, and think.’” His voice, agreeable enough in song, was doubly so in verse. “The poet Thomas Gray.”
She pinked again despite herself. His sudden intensity was not the antidote she needed to root out this sudden and silly enchantment. Nor did it help when Hester placed them side by side at supper. As if sensing Keturah’s fondness for the colonel, Hester seated her by Ma at the table’s opposite end.
