Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In stygian cave forlorn,
’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”
“Easier on the ears,” Hester said, jabbing her needle through the cloth. “And fits the sorry weather.”
Tessa paused. Lantern light cut through the blockhouse’s chinking and gilded the open door. Voices carried, robust, even merry, Clay’s among them. Would he soon step outside that door and make his nightly rounds as he usually did? The fort cat, a tabby no one claimed but all petted, yowled and swished its plumy tail in the doorway as if seeking shelter.
Hester yawned. Seconds spun forward. Clay emerged from the blockhouse, hat pulled low against the damp, tin lantern in hand to light his way.
Without so much as a glance toward Hester’s.
Watching him, Tessa held tightly to the memory of the man on bended knee in the blockhouse. That was the Clay she loved. The Clay who had been buried beneath layers of upheaval and hurt, who seemed at times so distant, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with her. Who raised her hopes one minute, then dashed them to the floor the next.
Her hungry heart skipped after him.
21
By the time they’d reached Big Sand Run a few leagues beyond Fort Tygart, the night’s rain had pushed farther west, and an odd south wind rustled the thick July leaves. Jude rode silently behind Clay as the sun cracked open bright as an egg yolk on the eastern horizon. Already they’d come across plentiful sign since leaving the fort, confirming the latest scouting report. The territory seemed to be swarming yet the Indians stayed hidden, tomahawks sheathed.
Half a dozen spies had ridden out at daybreak, scattering in different directions. Jude was assigned to the gaps and low places in the mountains for thirty miles or so, to a point where he’d meet with spies from the next fort. But the well-placed plan didn’t give Clay any ease.
“Don’t get near enough to danger that you can punch it with your ramrod,” Clay told him as they forded yet another stream. “I just need fresh word of any movement or action.”
“Aye.” Jude’s bay horse snorted, nearly masking his assent. “Glad I am of the rain. Otherwise we’d sound like buffalo coming through a canebrake with the woods so dry.”
Clay gave a nod, recalling Maddie’s long look at Jude as they’d left the fort. “I’ve a mind to keep you forted up. Or assign you to the settlement harvest.”
“Naw, Clay. Lord knows I’m always itching to roam. Soon enough I’ll be tied to home with winter and a baby comin’. And me still feeling like Methuselah. For now, I need to be free of fort walls.”
“Take heed then. There’s no replacing you.”
“A babe needs a father, amen. See you at week’s end.” With that, Jude was off, eclipsed by the deep woods.
Clay pressed on, skirting the Buckhannon as it flowed north, thinking once again how well suited it was for a gristmill, not only a ferry. He’d seen Tessa laboriously grinding a great quantity of corn with a hand mill outside Hester’s, no small feat. With so many brothers to manage the labor of building and so much riverfront acreage, a gristmill seemed a worthy pursuit. Mayhap on his own land along the Monongahela someday . . .
His thoughts canted backwards, not forward. He’d not bade Tessa good night once Heckewelder and his party returned to their blockhouse quarters. He’d simply made his rounds despite the downpour, passing by Hester’s at the last, half hoping a candle would still be burning. If so, he might have stopped by that unshuttered window. The temptation had been just about more than he could stand, hastening his step as he checked the horses and magazine, the watch and both gates. As he finished, his disappointment at finding that light out was keen enough that he’d fallen asleep far later than he wanted. Tessa Swan even stormed his dreams.
His double-mindedness gnawed at him. With her continually in reach, he’d lost his edge. He’d come here without any ties or motivations besides manning a garrison in the midst of an ongoing border war. A besotted commander was unfit for the job.
Back off, Tygart.
Despite that, he’d wanted to escort Tessa home this morning, a fool’s errand when she already had her brothers and Heckewelder’s party as escort. So he’d left out ahead of daybreak when she was just stirring. In the cabin next to him to boot, hair streaming down behind closed doors, in her smallclothes. That contemplation was enough to drive a man mad.
He bent his mind to the trail once again, coming to a deep gorge rimmed with hemlock, the water snow-white as it twisted and foamed over boulders on its journey to the west fork of the Monongahela River. How he wished he could cleanse his own thoughts, wash his mind free of Tessa in kind, and return to the untethered man he’d been. Yet when he was near her, his resolve crumbled like a sandy wall.
He tried to take a step back, look at her dispassionately. Raised with so many brothers, she bore that unflinchingly honest edge considered unbecoming in most women, yet it only turned her more fetching. No powder. No pomp. Just unadorned decency. And a bone-deep beauty beginning with her startling violet-blue eyes.
Was he wrong to pray that the Lord would remove this ill-timed attraction and his growing need for her?
He’d been moved to his boots when she’d joined hands with him across the breakfast table that May morn. Praying seemed as natural as breathing to her. Only she’d asked him to say grace, making him resurrect the long-forgotten blessing of his childhood that may well have fallen from his father’s lips. It only added to his yearning for a family to call his own.
And then yesterday, alone with her in the blockhouse, he’d been so taken by what she’d said about one’s soul being knit to another’s that he’d opened the Bible Heckewelder left him and tried to find the passage she spoke of. At midnight he’d put it down with the hope he’d return to it tonight.
Even now, sunk in reflection, he wasn’t fully present. The faint tinkle of a bell carried on the rising wind, a warning he might have missed. Before it faded, he’d slid off Bolt. Up this high, with cabins far below, the sound didn’t ring true. ’Twas a favorite trick of Indians to steal from belled livestock and lure settlers near enough to ambush.
Had he and Tamanen not done it?
