“Your logic is flawed, but I admire your spirit.”
“Indian ways can’t be compared to white ways, true. But surely if Keturah cares for this man, she should be allowed to return to him if she chooses.”
“An unholy union, by white standards. And almost certain death.”
She squared her shoulders. “Are all military men so grim, Colonel?”
His sorrow tempered his harshness. “When you’ve seen as much bloodshed as I have, there’s little room for any mawkishness.”
Something kindled in her, a desire to soften that side of him. To take the terrible things he’d known and turn them into something else entirely, to give him reason to rejoice. Or maybe that was the Lord’s doing entirely, bringing beauty from ashes.
“I’ll miss her if she goes. I never stopped missing her after she was taken.” Though she’s not the same, nor am I. “Keturah was the sister I never had.”
“There’s Ruth.” His voice had gentled. He seemed moved enough by her words to try to console her. “You’re oft in her company.”
“Ruth, aye.” Caught in a rare moment of vulnerability, she weighed sharing her heart. Would such a man understand? “There are friends, and then there are bosom friends. I believe as Scripture says, that there are those rare times your spirit is knit together with another’s and you love them like your own soul. That’s how I’ve always felt about Keturah.”
He pushed away from the hearth, and before she realized what was happening, he’d dropped to one knee and enfolded one of her hands in both of his. Her heart turned over. His eyes—oh, his beautiful, marbled eyes—seemed soft as candle wax. They told her what words and the touch of his hands did not, that he did indeed understand her, or wanted to. And that he knew she would miss Keturah if she went away again, but in a way altogether different than before.
“You truly have Keturah’s well-being at heart. I sought your counsel because of it.” His thumb caressed the back of her work-roughened hand. “Will you stay here while I ask her whether she wants to go with Heckewelder or return to the Lenape?”
“All right,” she answered.
He let go of her hand and stood, as if pondering just what he would say to Keturah, or maybe giving Tessa time to collect herself. Her gaze roamed this masculine den of his, the log walls bearing maps and furs and weapons, and finally snagged on an odd strip of bark rife with Indian symbols. Flying arrows, a fleeing woman. Despite its simple, maybe hasty rendering, her soul went still.
Before she could ask about it, Clay strode to the door and called Keturah to come over from Hester’s cabin. Looking more at ease than when she’d first left the blockhouse, Keturah smiled at Tessa and took the chair nearest her. Slowly Clay stated her choices. Join the Moravians at one of their settlements while awaiting word from her kin, or return to the Lenape.
Keturah showed no surprise. Maybe Heckewelder’s coming had prepared her for such a choice. “This Blackcoat—Heckewelder—will bring light to the True People along the Tuscarawas?”
“A new mission, aye, deeper into Indian country than any white man has gone before.”
“The Blackcoat has a warrior’s spirit then.”
“God goes with him,” Tessa said, silencing the voice that said these Moravians were more foolhardy than brave.
“Then I would like to go too,” Keturah said without hesitation. “If it is true what the Blackcoat says, and my child is with God, then I want to stay close to Him. To the light. When I die, I want to see my son.”
Again Tessa bent her mind to the Tuscarawas, when what she wanted for her friend was the far safer, established Bethlehem.
Clay set his pipe aside. “What does Tamanen think about the Blackcoats? Their talk of light and peace?”
Keturah’s lovely features darkened. “Every praying Indian is one less warrior, my husband says. But if he knew our son lives with the Father, he might listen more to the Blackcoats.”
Knotting her hands in her aproned lap, Tessa fixed her gaze on Clay’s boots, letting go of Keturah bit by bit. Her prayers would include Tamanen now, not only Keturah. Though she was still unsteady from the shock of learning about a Lenape husband, she sensed Tamanen cared for Keturah and she for him.
“Very well then.” Pushing away from the mantel, Clay gave Tessa a last look. “Cutright has more goods that might serve Miss Braam well on the trail. I’ll talk with Heckewelder while you help provision her.”
The simple task seemed an honor. Together she and Keturah left the blockhouse and crossed the common beneath heavy clouds amassing like cannonballs, the air heavy with the scent of coming rain. A squealing piglet ran past, several gleeful children in pursuit. Bestirred by Heckewelder’s talk of peaceful times to come, Tessa tried to picture a schoolhouse, a church. Would the Buckhannon ever know such noble things?
“Welcome, ladies,” Cutright greeted them. “What do you buy?”
“Keturah needs provisioning for a long journey,” Tessa told him, “at Colonel Tygart’s request.”
“Very well.”
Keturah began examining the shelves more intently. True to Clay’s word, here were ivory combs and printed fabrics, candied lime peel, and wool blankets not to be had on muster day. Though Tessa had never made a journey of any kind, she had helped Jasper prepare and so gathered those essentials, with a few extra items sure to please a woman. Keturah stayed near the stroud, that coarse woolen cloth known to the Indian trade, till Tessa took it from her hands.
“’Tis yours.”
