For a Noble Purpose, page 6
part #1 of Larksong Legacy Series
He could not be serious.
“You want me to marry one of you?” He knew her reputation, the curse, what had happened before his very eyes. How could he even suggest such a thing?
She shifted away, but he placed his hand on top of hers before she could remove it from the crate top. His eyes held such horrible emotion, such pleading that she was suddenly reminded of Linden’s brown-eyed gaze. He had held the same desperate look the day before he died, when he told her to continue on, to love again.
“Promise me, Sarah,” he had whispered. “Promise me you won’t give up.”
She hadn’t promised, hadn’t wanted to believe those words were his last lucid moment with her. She had laughed instead. Actually laughed at her dying husband, the man she loved above all others. “I won’t make a promise I won’t need to keep,” she told him. “I’m going to start packing the wedding dishes. I’ll have Sam bring them to the house tomorrow. Everything will be perfect for your arrival.”
His eyes still beseeched her, but he didn’t say another word. She laced her fingers between his and pressed a kiss to his forehead. In the morning, he had passed on. Ten years and it could have been yesterday.
“Why not?” Tobias was saying. “You’re beautiful, well-spoken, well-read I’m assuming? With a little instruction, you could be a hard worker. My brothers and I need hard workers.”
“Those things do not matter when you have lost seven husbands. You saw what happened to Mr. Whitticomb. No man would risk his life that way unless he was insane. Are you insane, Mr. Lark?”
“I think I’m incredibly sane. I would like to think this is the most rational decision I’ve made yet.”
“If this is rational to you, then you are insane. Find yourself an asylum, Mr. Lark. Please, excuse me.” She yanked her hand away but he jumped to block her path. Each attempt she made to move around him was met with interference. Blast these too-large skirts! She could hide a city underneath them, but she couldn’t slip through a doorway unhindered.
Tobias braced a hand on the cracked barn door and held the other palm out toward her. Part of her hoped the rest of the door would fall down and crush him.
“Miss Walcott, I know you are afraid because of what happened before, but I promise it won’t be like the last time.”
“How could you possibly promise such a thing? You don’t know a hair about my situation.”
There was a pause where Tobias and Cade looked at one another in a silent exchange. She couldn’t decipher what was going through their minds, but she could understand the intention. Should they tell her the entire truth? Could she handle it?
Did she even want to know?
Finally, Cade spoke. “When you stay in a place too long, you accept that who you are is all you’ll ever be, but Washington is unlike anything you’ve seen before. Mountains with snow caps, fields of lush wildflowers, mile upon mile never touched by man. The ocean’s beauty stretches out like nothing you could imagine. In Charleston, our townhouse was not far from the ocean. It was a wondrous place, yet we have been told it pales in comparison to the Northwest territories.”
How she would love to believe in such a place of beauty. Miles and miles of nothingness. To fly off to another world where no one knew her, where she didn’t even know herself. Outside, the barn’s planking seemed to creak a little less. Was it her imagination or had the winds actually faded? Perhaps she wouldn’t be caught in the storm after all.
“Out west, you can be anyone you want,” Cade continued. He stepped out from between the horses and his face now held a charming smile. “Women equal with men, whites with blacks. Larksong will be our town, where we make the rules we want. Everyone is welcome and no one will know or care about your past.”
Her father might delight in having her far away where he didn’t need to deal with her anymore. The whisperings would cease. He would certainly be happier if she didn’t go north to “become a Yankee.”
She couldn’t marry either of them though. That was a chance she could never take again. If marriage was a condition, then she could never agree.
Deflect, she thought. Tobias clearly didn’t mind that she had a terrible history with husbands. Providing an alternate excuse would be a better option.
She bit her lip and shook her head. “I could never leave without my maid, Martha.”
“I will speak to your father. See if we can come to an agreement.”
“The law doesn’t allow him to free her and he would never sell her. He would never release any of them that way.”
Her father might let Sarah leave, but he would never sell Martha. He might have purchased Martha to be her playmate, but she had grown into a fine servant. He needed her to tend the house. The more Sarah thought on it, the more she realized how much she didn’t want to leave her dearest friend behind. It would be difficult to go to Boston without her, but impossible to imagine heading into the savage wilderness on her own.
She started as Tobias claimed her hand from against her stomach, unaware he had even approached. He held it between both of his, light enough to pull away if she desired, firm enough to engage her to stay. It was an intimate touch and far too forward for a stranger. She met his gaze slowly and wondered if he could see the confusion in her own.
“Miss Walcott,” he said gently, “you must consider your own future now. There are other unmarried able-bodied men in our party. We’ve vetted each person properly, only the best have joined us, and one day you may be drawn to one of them. However…” He paused, looked again at his brother in another unspoken interaction. Mr. Aspen would expect her to return soon. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to tear her fingers from his grip.
“I have told you,” she said, drawing his attention back. “I will never marry again.”
“You will, Miss Walcott. And with the utmost respect, I would like to request that you marry me.”
“To gain but some land? Surely, other women can fulfill that need without endangering your life.”
“They can, certainly, but it is your rare gift which intrigues me more than anything else.”
“Tobias!” Cade dropped the reins and was beside his brother, his hand gripping Tobias’s upper arm. He pegged him with a harsh glance. “Tobias, we agreed. This is not the time.”
“There is no other time!” he shot back. “We leave in mere hours. I know what Garrett said, but if we wait for Jamison’s agreement, we’ve lost our only chance. Is that what you want?”
“I…” Cade began, then snapped his lips shut and turned away. He blinked hard. Had his brother actually driven him to tears?
When Tobias released her hands to tend to his brother in hushed tones, she removed herself several paces. She should turn and go. Leave them to their folly, let him find another wife who didn’t carry the weight of death upon her shoulders. Tobias seemed a kind enough man, rather misguided in love, yet a nice enough fellow. There were plenty of flighty women who would ingest his prattle like cold spring water on a summer’s day. They would admire his handsome features, his soulful eyes, and smart smile. When he had twirled her around the pine board floor, his touch had been gentle, his fingers on her waist featherlight. Later…after Mr. Whittcomb…he had met her gaze from across the room like he understood every thought inside her head. Like he knew exactly what to say if only they were alone.
They were alone now. Well, almost.
“Explain it to me,” she said. Both men looked at her, thankfully with no tears on Cade’s cheeks and simple astonishment on his elder brother’s.
She folded her hands, five black-gloved fingers upon the others. “Whatever it is you must say, I promise to hold in confidence. I have no desire to give this town more opportunity to gossip on my behalf.”
Five minutes later, however, she had thoroughly decided she shouldn’t have asked. For Tobias Lark told her a tale so fanciful she couldn’t dare believe it to be true. He explained how the brothers held special talents, inherited over a hundred years. His was the ability to build with incredible speed and accuracy, then he described building methods which hadn’t yet been invented. That shouldn’t even be physically possible.
The most irrational part of all was he claimed she was one of them! Her husbands’ deaths were due to an unconscious Gift murdering them without her knowledge, and the only way to fix it was to marry another Gifted. Honestly, the man had completely lost his mind.
She looked to Cade for rationality, but he skulked backward, placing distance between them again. “What is your Gift then?” she asked him. “Shooting lightning from your fingertips?” His eyes darted in either direction, out the barn doors, and even up into the rafters. Honestly, who would be lurking there?
Finally, Cade shrugged. “Close. I can predict weather changes.”
“If that’s a Gift, then my father is Gifted too,” she scoffed. “He falls ill with a headache any time the rain clouds form.” He was probably suffering one at this very moment.
Tobias nodded. “If you’re Gifted, then likely your father is too. Giftedness is in our blood.”
“And my Gift is that I kill people?”
“Exactly, only I wouldn’t be so macabre about it. We could call it unintentional mariticide.”
If what he said was true, then her husbands had died by her hands. Not intentionally, but she was still responsible. Her. Not Linden.
“No,” she said. “This is too much to be believed.”
“It’s true.” Cade took a tentative step forward, one hand on his stomach and his expression green. “Show her, Tobias.”
Tobias knelt before her then, finally allowing his intense gaze to fall as well. He plucked strands of grass and clover into a bundle, and she didn’t consider the reason. She only debated why she wasn’t running out the unguarded door. Flee to Mr. Aspen and insist he summon the sheriff.
From here, she could make out the faint path back to the road. It wasn’t far. The sun was high, nearing noon and the lunch hour. Once on the boardwalk, she could get lost in the bustle of the main thoroughfare and be rid of these men and their crazy notions forever.
They were simply notions, weren’t they? They couldn’t honestly have some sort of strange abilities, nor could she. She couldn’t be more of a freak of nature than she already was. Freaks were locked away or put on display. No, her husbands’ deaths must be the product of coincidence or Linden’s revenge.
Linden’s revenge? Honestly, Sarah, listen to yourself. Is believing in ghostly vengeance any more reasonable than having a knack for unintended murder?
She lifted her hands, staring at them as she wondered if they would begin to emit some kind of magical glow. But no, they were only her same hands, fingers covered in black lace and a gorgeous ring of green and gold and white encircling her fourth finger.
Wait. A ring?
Braided and looped and more intricate than many rings of metal, the grass and clover he had plucked mixed with bits of golden flora she couldn’t identify. Graceful and feminine unlike many of the garish engagement rings her friends delighted in. Everything about this creation was pure loveliness.
“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed. “How did you make something so delicate out of grass? And so quickly?” Tobias grinned up at her from where he still knelt upon the grass, one forearm draped upon his knee. She looked from him to the ring and back. “That’s impossible.”
“I told you, Sarah, we’re Gifted. You’re Gifted. You belong with us.”
He rose from the ground and reached into his suit jacket, removing a wooden bird created from nothing more than sticks. Each twig bent over one another in perfect curves, beak to body swooped into a feathered tail, the lines more precise than any whittler could perform. No obvious twine, nails, or paste held it together, but there must be. It wasn’t possible otherwise.
How many times had she said that in the last five minutes?
“A lark,” he explained. “I made it the other night…after…well, just after.”
“Yes, after,” she whispered, her eyes on the bird. She had no desire to replay Mr. Whitticomb’s horrid death behind her eyes yet again. It would haunt her dreams enough in the coming months. All her husbands’ had.
She accepted the graceful lark, holding it in her cupped hands like it was a living breathing creature. She could touch it, feel it, see it with her own eyes. Every slant of every twig. Even if he hadn’t made it, even if he stole it, someone had to have crafted it. Someone had accomplished something that simply should not be.
Everything in her life should not be.
He stepped toward his horse, taking the reins from Cade. “We leave for Independence this afternoon. Think about what I said, Miss Walcott. Think about where you belong.”
With that, they were gone. She was left in a rickety barn with only a ring, a bird, and the grey heavens as they opened up upon her.
8
B
y the time she knocked on Mr. Aspen’s door, the downpour had ceased, afternoon sunrays painting rainbows across the misty sky. He had shaken his head at her appearance, offered her a blanket to drape about her shoulders, and quietly directed his servants to ready the carriage. A little over an hour later, she now shivered in her parents’ foyer, her skirts dripping upon the tile, while outside, lingering rain droplets trickled into puddles beneath the eaves.
“Landsakes, Miss Sarah,” Tildy exclaimed. “Were’s you caught in the storm?”
Sarah only nodded as she crossed the threshold into her parents’ home. Mr. Aspen followed closely behind, his hat and shoulders only slightly damp, whereas she looked like a drowned puppy. She had caught the brunt of the storm on her walk back to his home, leaving her blonde curls plastered to her neck and dripping down her bodice. She had caused quite an inappropriate stir with her heels clacking down the boardwalk. Attempting to push damp tendrils out of her face while holding her skirts high was no simple matter and twice, she nearly tripped off the foot-high ledge into the muddy street.
From behind her father’s closed office door rose the shuffle of desk chairs and footsteps across the hardwood. Two sets of footsteps. More visitors and her appearance as tussled as a kitten in a watering trough. There would be more stories flying about over dining tables tonight.
When the office door opened, a stranger was with Papa, the man’s frock coat and trousers not nearly as polished, but still clean and with no sign of fallen hems or stray stitches. He had removed his hat to expose greased-back hair, the dark oil disguising its true shade. His straight lips and lack of greeting played rather formidably.
Her father faltered when he saw her standing there. “Sarah? Why are you so unkempt? And what is that?” He pointed to the wooden bird Tobias had given her.
She had forgotten she still carried it. Mr. Aspen had made no comment on it at any point. But there it was, wooden twigs firmly fixed between her palms, the woven ring braided around her fourth finger. Her father could see them too, which meant her conversation with Tobias hadn’t been conjured by her own design. As she bounced along in Mr. Aspen’s carriage with silence unending, she had allowed herself time to consider what took place in the barn and whether it was real. She couldn’t explain how Mr. Lark crafted those items, but she couldn’t believe it was as he claimed. What he had done didn’t seem supernatural, yet it wasn’t exactly natural either. Suspended somewhere between what was possible and what could be imagined.
“A gift from someone at the funeral. Unimportant.” She slipped it, along with the braided ring, into the pocket bag tied beneath her skirt. She hoped the wood would not become waterlogged in the damp material. “I was caught in the storm, but see, I am here. No worse for the walking.”
Her father strode to the foyer sidelight and looked at the clear sky through the rain-speckled pane. “So it appears. The water will be good for the crops.” He seemed distracted and did not immediately turn, pausing to observe the exterior. “Perhaps you should go upstairs and change first. It is improper to receive a guest in such attire and I will not have you mussing the parlor upholstery.”
This guest was for her? For the first time, she truly took in the stranger’s appearance and realized he was likely little more than thirty. The perfect age for a twenty-eight-year-old widow. “Another husband?” she cried. “No, Papa, I can’t—”
He held up a hand. “Silence, Sarah. It is not what you suppose.”
She looked between her father and the latest in a long line of visitors over the past few days. “Then what is the reason for this call?”
Her mother entered the foyer, stopping within the doorway from the kitchen hall. She had changed from her ebony dress into a light green gown with a slender hoop more suitable for afternoon entertainment. After observing appropriate mourning traditions for ten years, was she now throwing societal expectations to the wind? Would her friends not find her behavior unsavory if they knew?
She offered Sarah a slight smile, but it contained little warmth. “There will be time enough to discuss after you change those dripping clothes. Martha is already upstairs readying your things.”
“My things?”
“Yes. You’re ah…” Her mother looked to her father as though silently asking for the right word. Finally, he turned.
“You’re taking some time to convalesce, my dear.”
“Convalesce? I’m not ill.” She felt like her head had emptied, her brain fallen into her chest where her heart now thudded. Mr. Aspen lingered near the door, hands folded upon his cane as he took stock of the conversation. The visitor also eyed her as though an intervention would be required and his broad shoulders and thick muscles were happy to comply.
“This man is from Fulton’s Asylum Number One. He’s here to collect you.”
