Their task done, they watched as Cutright entered the items into his thick ledger. ’Twould be a long, risky journey, but at least provisions were in place. Tessa took some comfort in that.
New purchases in arm, they went out, nearly bumping into Maddie as they cleared the doorway.
“Never a dull day at Fort Tygart,” Maddie said. “Clay said you’d be in directly. Spending the night too?”
“Likely,” Tessa said. ’Twas her next hope in a long line of them. Another private moonlit talk by the fort’s garden wouldn’t be amiss even in the rain. “You look well, Maddie.”
“No longer sick to my shoes, aye,” Maddie returned with considerably more sass than when they’d last seen her. “Eating like a farmhand too. Just ask Jude.”
“How long now?” Tessa asked, finding it impossible to tell with Maddie so slim.
“About Christmastime to my reckoning. Granny Sykes will be on hand. We’re prayin’ for a mild winter.”
Tessa refrained from saying their border winters were wicked, the fort’s mud ankle deep before freezing in an onslaught of heavy snows. But surely Maddie knew, trail worn as she was.
“Keep your baby abed with you,” Keturah was saying. “Drink stinging-nettle tea.”
The sorrow in Keturah’s words lanced Tessa’s heart. Her advice was born of a mother’s love, no doubt.
“I’m glad for these high walls after all the forays I’ve spent outside them.” Maddie’s gaze lifted to the pickets. “Jude’s crafting a cradle and Hester’s making a proper feather tick.”
“I’ve started some garments to give you,” Tessa told her. “So small I can hardly see my stitches.”
“Obliged,” Maddie said, her gaze trailing after the children still in pursuit of the piglet. “Soon our babe will be underfoot and raising dust with the likes o’ them.” She rested a hand on her slowly rounding middle. “Now look smart, here comes Clay.”
Her back to him, Tessa made peace with her bittersweet feelings, preparing to bid goodbye to Keturah if that’s what the moment called for.
Lord, whatever happens, let it be right and good for Keturah.
Clay came to a stop just outside their circle, his words for Keturah. “You’ll leave out in the morning for the Ohio country, ferrying across at Swan Station, where you’ll collect your belongings.”
One final eve at the fort, then. Keturah nodded as a warm rain began falling, giving a smile of genuine joy in the gloom of the waning afternoon. Maddie showed no surprise, aware Heckewelder’s arrival spelled some change.
“You’ll be a welcome addition to their party, understanding the Lenape like you do,” Clay continued. “And if word comes from your kin, I’ll see that it reaches the Tuscarawas.”
They scattered, each to their respective cabins. Tessa and Keturah headed for Hester’s.
Suppertime came, and Tessa helped Hester serve the colonel and Heckewelder’s party, now including Keturah, in the blockhouse. As they refilled tankards and dishes, Tessa listened to them discuss the coming journey, Clay giving insight about rivers and ranges to cross and trails to be chary of.
Mindful of their early rising, Keturah sought her loft bed while Tessa began reading from her book of poetry and Hester turned to her handwork. The rain began an outright drumbeat, the deserted common soon the color and consistency of molasses, dousing Tessa’s hopes along with it. She and Clay wouldn’t take a turn outside on such a night.
Her voice was hardly heard above the downpour.
“My days have been so wondrous free,
The little birds that fly
With careless ease from tree to tree,
Were but as bless’d as I.”
“What foolishness,” Hester barked from her corner. “My ears cannot abide such sentiment.”
Which is probably why you remain unwed.
Tessa bit her tongue against the hasty retort and paged to another bit of verse. Surely this was more to Hester’s liking.
“Hence loathed melancholy,
