Freeing the strand from his bold fingers, she took a step back. “A gift.”
A reassuring hand grazed the small of her back. Xander came forward, torchlight illuminating his wary gaze like a lightning flash. Laurent seemed to recoil. In the ensuing silence roiled hostility, loathing, a palpable ill will. She felt nearly blackened by it.
“Your father has had enough merriment.” Without a word to the physic, Xander took her elbow and steered her toward the stables.
In his wake was her mother. “Xander has lent us a pony cart to ride home in.”
“Aye, let us depart.” Ustis brought up the rear, his beloved face strained.
Near the stables a groom was readying their ride. Selah and Watseka would walk behind with a pine knot. Passing Selah the light, Xander accompanied them to the bridle path near shore and saw them safely off.
“Soon, Selah.” Xander’s last, heartfelt words to her carried her home.
29
By daylight the shell necklace was even prettier than when she’d been given it, a tangible reminder of her and Xander’s newfound tie. The frolic’s afterglow still lingered, adding a deep-seated joy to the next few days’ tasks. Less busy in the kitchen, Selah had more time to help her father. The bridle path between Hopewell Hundred and the warehouse was well traveled now as autumn encroached. Watseka oft accompanied her, Kentke nipping at their heels.
This morn, with her father downriver at James Towne, Selah traipsed after her mother into the near woods, empty baskets on both arms, intent on wildcrafting.
Candace eyed the shell necklace her daughter wore night and day, a knowing spark in her eye. “Our little Watseka is a clever matchmaker, so it seems, and not only a bead maker.”
“Older and wiser than her years, aye.”
“Well, I am a firm believer in beginning your lives as one without further ado. You’re clearly Xander’s choice. Why wait?” Candace began tearing boneset leaves from a bush in such haste it underscored her words. “If I’ve learned onelesson in Virginia, ’tis brevity. Many do not have the luxury of the morrow.”
“Given the season, I cannot simply load a cart with my belongings and hie to Rose-n-Vale.” Selah wandered farther into the woods toward a persimmon tree heavy with fruit. “Not till after the harvest.”
“All in good time, I suppose.” Candace turned grave. “It does not help that Helion Laurent has designs to pay more visits to the tobacco wives in the outlying shires. He approached your father at the warehouse just yesterday. It seems the governor is insistent—”
“Nay.” Selah straightened, ready to defy Harvey himself. “I shan’t accompany Laurent again at any time.”
“Your father told him the same. Vexed, the physic was.” Candace paused in her gathering. “If you were to marry, you would be safeguarded from Laurent’s plans and purposes.”
“His schemes, you mean.” Selah bit into a ripe persimmon, the juice dripping onto her bodice. “I trust him not.”
“Because of his trickery regarding Mattachanna? Or is there more?”
Much more, I sense, though I know none of it.
Selah tossed the pit away. “Xander has warned me to give him wide berth.”
Candace cast her an aggrieved look as they moved through the brush in search of more boneset. “Then you’d best heed your betrothed’s—for I shall call him nothing less—warning.”
“I shall, never fear.” But she did fear, goose bumps rising on her arms at Laurent’s latest ploy.
They fell silent, lost in their search, and their baskets soon overflowed with papaws and medicinal plants to stand themin good stead for the coming winter. Their wandering had taken them far, almost to the edges of Laurent land.
Though there’d been no cause for alarm today, no presentiment of trouble, Selah cast her skittish gaze wide, unable to shake the feeling of being watched. A rising wind added to her angst, leaves flying and twigs snapping and causing movement in every corner.
At last Candace called over her shoulder, “Come, let us hasten back and see how Izella and Watseka are faring with their applesauce making.”
Xander helped Oceanus onto the mounting block, a telling skittishness in the lad’s movements. His pony waited patiently, a handsome gray just twelve hands high, rescued from a wrecked Spanish galleon a year past. From a distance Nurse Lineboro watched, a speck of linen on the portico.
“Nurse says I might snap my neck.” Oceanus looked from the portico to Xander, his eyes wide beneath his sweep of dark hair. “What means she?”
It means Nurse Lineboro will soon be sent away.
“Only that you take care to learn all you can about horses so accidents don’t happen,” Xander replied. Selah aside, he desired nothing more at that moment than to wipe away the distress marring Oceanus’s face.
