“Any more valley history you want to share?”
“Aye.” He winked while continuing his work. “Buttermilk Falls is known to be a comely place for courting.”
Mae’s sudden fluster left her tongue-tied. He knew?
He settled the log into place. “It’s plain as print the both of you are thoroughly smitten, though General Harlow covers it better than you do.”
“All right, then,” she confessed. “I’ve not been the same since he first set foot in Chatham.”
“You light up like a firefly around him. Joanna’s noticed too.”
“Do you give your blessing?”
“There’s none finer than the general, unless it’s Washington himself.”
“But you’ve just met him.”
He nodded. “The measure of a man oft happens before you reason your way through it. I’ve long heard about him even before he left Virginia, including his exceptional marksmanship, mayhap the best since Boone.”
“Colonel Boone of the Virginia militia?” Mae thought back to countless conversations around Chatham’s dining room table. “He and General Harlow surveyed together in the Shenandoah Valley a few years ago.”
“As has been said, birds of a kind and color always flock and fly together.” Jon winked again. “Maebel Bohannon Harlow sounds quite fitting.”
Smiling, Mae pushed away from the fence, saying over her shoulder, “I hope we all live to see it.”
twenty-seven
The defeat of the Americans in Canada and the advantages gained by the British arms in the Jerseys, and indeed for some months in every other quarter, gave to the royal cause an air of triumph.
Mercy Otis Warren
On the next Sabbath, Rhys rode into the valley with James, the short time they’d been apart the longest of Mae’s life. Suddenly self-conscious, she smoothed her apron and hair while they dismounted and turned their horses to pasture. She wore her second-best dress, the silk taffeta a pale sage green, an ivory sash about her waist. Hardly the linen and homespun of the wilds of New York.
As the two men approached the porch where they waited, Mae felt as excited as little Phemie, who all but danced atop the planks beside her.
“Uncle James?” she echoed when Mae told her he was coming. “And the giant!”
The giant, of course, was Rhys. With a little shout, Phemie jumped off the porch and into James’s arms. When he tossed her into the air she erupted into giggles. Once they’d gone inside, Mae faced Rhys, who’d removed his hat and eyed her like a long-denied dessert.
Freshly shaven, he’d exchanged his rough trail garb for a respectable pair of breeches, shirt, and frock coat, even boots. He clutched his rifle in his right hand, reminding her of her shooting lesson.
“Walk out with me,” he said.
Her heart leapt as she stepped off the porch. She’d thought they’d join the family and not have a moment to themselves the entire Sabbath.
Once they’d left the yard and moved toward the western edge of trees that hedged the valley, her petticoats swished and caught at the tall grass and brambles. The wind that sent her lace cap fluttering against its pins made her take a deep, steadying breath.
“Where are we going?” she asked as a wood thrush began singing in flutelike tones from a shaggy hemlock.
“Buttermilk Falls.”
Had Jon told him? Or had his reconnaissance outside fort walls led him there?
They took a deer trail, the woods closing green and shadowed about them as they began a slight climb. In minutes Mae grew winded and Rhys swiped at the sweat beading his upper lip with a coat sleeve.
They heard the falls from a distance, their thunder muting the morning birdsong. When they came through the trees the falls’ mist met them, stirring ferns and foliage as the cascading water poured into a mossy, rocky basin remarkably like an emptied pitcher of buttermilk. For a few moments they just stood hand in hand, awed.
Letting go of him, Mae discreetly turned her back and slipped off her shoes before removing her garters and stockings, then laid them in a little heap atop a rock at the rim of the pool. Already damp from the mist, she threw caution to the wind, submerging one pale, slim foot below water as shockingly cold as the day was warm.
