Starcatcher, page 40
But when her gaze went to the stranger, her heart sank. Here was no willing redemptioner. His back was stiff with resentment, and his striking, hawklike features were stamped with bitter hostility.
He stayed in the saddle, watching John, who was answering Noel’s incessant questions. Although John was not a demonstrative man, he loved his children fiercely. When his gaze flickered up to hers, she saw worry and even a little fear in his eyes.
Turning, John said something to the man on horseback. The stranger dismounted, and she noted that, despite the proud, stiff way he held himself, he completed the maneuver with the ease and grace of a practiced horseman. As he took several steps toward her, she thought, Dear God, he’s tall, even taller than John. His ill-fitting, coarse clothes hung on a rail-thin form, and the wrists revealed by his too short sleeves were raw and bleeding. Raising her gaze, she found him staring at her. His eyes were a dark green—greener than emeralds—and unreadable. They weren’t dull or empty; they were … like glass, reflecting rather than revealing.
“This is Ian Sutherland,” John said belatedly. “My wife, Fancy Marsh.”
Nothing flickered in those eyes, and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t even acknowledge her. Then he nodded. But that nod had nothing to do with submission, she sensed immediately. Rather it was an inborn courtesy. A gentleman’s instinct?
A dangerous gentleman. She felt it in every fiber of her being.
Odd, then, that Lucky, who distrusted strangers and always let them know it, was strangely quiet.
“Mr. Sutherland,” she acknowledged.
He looked surprised at the returned courtesy, and she was pleased to have startled some reaction from a face that otherwise resembled granite. His jaw tightened slightly, but he said nothing. She was beginning to wonder whether he had a voice.
“Hello,” a small voice said, and she looked down. Noel was staring at the stranger with fascination. “I’m Noel,” he said.
Something shifted in the stranger’s green eyes, but he didn’t move. Or speak.
“Do you talk?” Noel asked, almost as if he’d read her own mind. “Fortune doesn’t.” To Noel, not talking was not extraordinary at all, and his matter-of-fact tone said as much.
A muscle throbbed in the man’s cheek, and his gaze rested on Noel’s face for a moment. “Aye,” he said finally, obviously reluctant to admit even that much.
“That’s my dog, Lucky,” Noel said, then added, clearly awed by his dog’s acceptance of the bondsman, “He usually growls at strangers. He must like you. I have a cat and a crow and a raccoon, too. Even a squirrel. His name is Posey. You like animals, don’t you?”
For a moment, Ian Sutherland looked as if he had taken a blow to the body. Then his lips tightened, and his shoulders became, if possible, even more rigid. Fancy held her breath, waiting to see if he would respond to the eager glow in her son’s eyes. He didn’t want to. That was apparent.
“Aye,” Sutherland said at last. Then he turned to glare at John.
Fancy saw John’s shoulders slump, and she knew her own bearing must mirror his disappointment at this most inauspicious beginning. Handing the reins of his horse to the bondsman, her husband said, “Rub them down and give them some feed. Fancy will have a meal ready for us later.”
The stranger took the reins of both horses and, without any further acknowledgment of either the Marsh family or the order he’d been given, easily led the mare and John’s often temperamental stallion toward the barn.
Fancy watched him. He was obviously far more comfortable with animals than with human beings. Like Noel, she was stunned that Lucky had seemed to accept him right away. Yet she couldn’t help but feel uneasy.
Her gaze slid to her husband. “John,” she said finally, “what have you done?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I really don’t know.”
Ian curried the horses, trying not to feel satisfaction at the soft nuzzling the mare gave him. He didn’t want to feel anything. And yet … he couldn’t prevent his hand from stroking the animal’s neck. She really was a beauty.
He quickly fed and watered both animals. Two other horses occupied stalls behind him, and he’d seen several others in the two paddocks. All of them were fine-looking animals, as fine as any he’d ever seen, and it was impossible not to appreciate the care that had obviously gone into breeding such superb creatures.
Impossible also to keep himself from enjoying these brief moments of quiet among them. Some of the tension left his body as he worked, and when he’d finished, he took a moment to lean against one of the stalls and simply admire the stallion.
But he paid for letting his guard down. He had dropped it only slightly, but that was enough. Enough to let in the pain. It sliced through him, deep and dark and fierce, and he knew, in that instant, that he’d failed utterly in his attempt to sever himself from painful emotions. He’d succeeded only in masking his loneliness and despair.
Swearing under his breath, Ian moved away from the stall. Noting briefly the makeshift bed and assuming it was to be his, he looked for anything that he might use as a weapon. All the usual farm implements were there: a scythe, several axes, a pitchfork. John Marsh was a trusting man.
Sighing, he sat on the narrow bed. It felt odd after all this time sleeping either on the stone floor of a cell or the bare boards of a ship’s hold. Last night he had lain on the ground, but he hadn’t slept. He had thought about running off with the two horses, one to ride and one to sell.
Two things had stopped him. He knew almost nothing about this colony called Maryland, not even which direction to run. And his scarred wrists and coarse clothes would betray him in a moment. Better to wait. And yet freedom had been so close he could taste it.
He rubbed his tender wrists now, well aware that yesterday had been the first day he hadn’t worn irons in … How long had it been? The date on his indenture papers was May 25, 1747. A year and a month since the tragedy at Culloden. He and Derek had hidden for several weeks before being captured. He’d been in irons since then. An entire year.
It seemed like an eternity. An eternity during which he’d become a stranger even to himself. Gone was the studious lad who’d followed the family’s second son tradition and studied classics at the University of Edinburgh. Then he had managed the clan’s business affairs for his older brother. He had continued to train at arms, as did every Highland male, but he’d discovered his heart was in books, not war. Still, he had not hesitated when his older brother sided with Bonnie Prince Charlie. And he had seen more death and destruction, more hideous waste, since that day than he had known existed.
Images of his brothers’ deaths were seared into his mind, and anxiety about his sister was a permanent knot in his gut. In the days before he and Derek were captured, he’d heard terrible stories: women and children burned alive in barns, young girls raped. Katy was lost out there somewhere, Katy who had always been so loved and protected.
The lad, Noel, reminded him of Katy. Quiet, eager, ingenuous. He’d had a devil of a time not giving the lad, at the least, a smile. “You like animals, don’t you?” Noel had asked. The question had shaken him. It could have been Katy speaking. She loved animals; indeed, she’d had her own pair of ferrets—another tradition in the Sutherland family. Were the little beasts with her now? Or had they been taken, along with everything else?
Ian was exhausted, yet his mind would not stop spinning. He couldn’t decipher John Marsh—or his wife, who looked to be a good thirty years younger than her husband. She had obviously been shocked by Ian’s appearance and had said little, yet he remembered the way she had spoken his name and the soft smile she had given the boy. Her eyes had been wary, though, when she looked upon him. With good reason, he thought. He was certain she realized her husband had brought home no tame servant.
Well, it was no matter to him. He owed Marsh nothing, and his family even less. He would not hurt them, but neither did he plan to stay one hour longer than necessary. He was well disabused about kindness and loyalty. After spending his boyhood fostering with the Macraes, he hadn’t believed they would turn against Scotland, against its true prince. Yet he had seen them fighting and killing Sutherlands. And the fact that the Macraes had allowed Derek to die while interceding for Ian himself did nothing to lessen his hatred for all Scotsmen who had sided with the English. It had also taught him an important lesson: even those one trusted were perfectly capable of betrayal.
Ian heaved a deep sigh and lay down upon the narrow but comfortable mattress. A few good meals couldn’t erase the effects of a year of near starvation, nor did months of confinement prepare one for two days of sitting in a saddle. He was as tired, and as weak, as if he were recovering from a grave illness. Mayhap he was tired enough to sleep.
Tired enough that his sleep might not be plagued by nightmares.
Fancy watched as John looked in on the napping Amy, touching his hand to her face and watching her sleep for several moments. Then he returned to the main room and slumped into a chair.
Before questioning him about the bondsman, she gave him a glass of ale and watched him anxiously. Was he feeling worse? His face seemed even pastier than usual.
Fancy waited what seemed like hours before his body appeared to relax. Then she could wait no longer. “He looks angry,” she said. “He didn’t come over here of his own free will, did he? He didn’t indenture himself for passage?”
Setting his empty glass on the table, John sighed. “There were only convicts, Fancy.”
She bit her lip. She’d known it the moment she saw the scars and open sores on his wrists.
“He was the best of the lot,” John said, “and he can read and write.”
Even that welcome news paled in the face of the threat Ian Sutherland posed to her family. “What was his crime?” she asked.
“Treason,” John said. “He fought with the Scots against King George.”
Fancy’s breath caught in her throat, her apprehension increasing. She had heard of the fierceness of Scottish warriors. Yet she also felt a measure of compassion for the bondsman, who apparently was guilty of little but following his conscience. She suddenly understood the rancor on Ian Sutherland’s face.
“Caleb Byars was going to buy him,” John continued. “I couldn’t stand by and allow it.”
Pulling out the chair across from her husband, she sat down and met his gaze. “What are you going to bring home next?” she teased gently. “An elephant?”
John did not smile. “The indenture is for fourteen years,” he said slowly. “I told Sutherland I would give him his freedom in five if he stayed willingly.”
But he would not. Fancy knew that as surely as she knew the sun set each evening.
“I will offer him a small wage, too,” John said after a moment’s pause. “At least Robert can’t scare him off.”
Fancy was envisioning the bondsman in her mind. She doubted anyone would intimidate him, including her husband. But she thought—no, prayed—they could persuade him to stay. He wouldn’t be able to go back to Scotland. She knew well enough that any man transported as a convict could return only on pain of death.
“His wrists need tending,” she said finally.
John nodded. “His ankles too, probably. They had him in irons. And you can see that his stomach is in sore need of food. Dammit, he’s nearly starved to death!” He glanced at her. “That’s why I was late. He needed food and rest. I half expected him to run last night while I was asleep. But he’s smart enough to know he wouldn’t get far in a strange country with that brand on his thumb.”
She hadn’t noticed. The very thought sent ripples of pain through her.
Hesitating, John studied her for a moment, then continued slowly. “Fancy, I don’t think he would hurt any of us. I wouldn’t have purchased his indenture otherwise. But still … be cautious.”
Fancy knew that keeping Noel away from the man would be difficult, if not impossible. The boy had a cat’s curiosity. Seeing the worry on her husband’s face, however, she nodded.
John looked as if he wanted to say more, and she tipped her head in question.
After a short pause he said, “One of the other convicts said Sutherland had been a lord of some kind.”
She felt not even a flicker of surprise at this information. Ian Sutherland had a natural grace about him, an arrogance in the way he held himself, that spoke of breeding and position. The kind of breeding and position that poor clothes and obvious exhaustion could not mask. Any tentative spark of hope she might have been nurturing was quashed. How could a man who had been a lord adjust to being little more than a slave?
“Will he eat with us?” Fancy wasn’t sure she wanted the glowering Scotsman at her table. Lord, she had no idea what Fortune would make of him—or what he would make of Fortune. Yet he must be terribly lonely, being forced from his own country and family.
John took a long time to answer. Finally he nodded, saying, “I want … I hope he will become part of the family.”
Fancy strongly doubted it, but she didn’t argue. “I’ll get you some stew,” she said, rising. “Then you should rest.”
“I’m not hungry,” John said. “But take some out to the Scotsman. And do something for those wounds.”
She hesitated. “What should I call him?”
John looked as uncertain as she felt. The man certainly didn’t invite familiarity. Her husband finally shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I’ve never owned anyone before.” With a weary sigh, he rose and headed for the bedroom, hesitating at the doorway to look back at her. “Perhaps I should go with you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he could hurt me even if he wanted to. He looks too weak to frighten a fly.” She paused. “I hope he’s not too weak to help you.”
“I won’t put him to work tomorrow or the next day,” John said. “But I suspect he’ll regain his strength soon. Especially,” he added with a slight smile, “eating your good cooking.”
Despite the warmth in his voice, she saw the concern in his eyes, and she knew its cause: he didn’t want her to go alone to the barn, but he didn’t have the strength to go with her.
“Sutherland knows … the penalties for escaping,” John said, trying to reassure both of them.
Fancy wasn’t mollified. Something about the Scotsman deeply disturbed her. “I’ll be all right,” she said with feigned confidence.
“Where’s Fortune?”
“She went to gather herbs,” she said.
If he’d been feeling well, she knew he might have pursued that subject, questioning the wisdom of allowing her sister to wander alone in the woods. Instead, he merely dragged his feet into the bedroom and closed the door.
Vowing that she would make John spend the following day in the same pursuit he had planned for his bondsman—resting—Fancy went to collect the ingredients she needed for a poultice.
Outside, she slipped down into the cool cellar where she kept fruit and herbs and collected a handful of wild garlic. Taking the strong-smelling plant to the kitchen, she cut it into small pieces and added it to a pot of water. After hanging the pot over the fire to boil, she poured stew into a deep bowl and placed it carefully in a basket, along with a loaf of the bread she’d baked that morning. She added butter, jam, cheese, and a spoon, then, after hesitating for a moment, dropped a blunt knife into the basket.
By then her garlic medicine was ready. She poured it into a jar and placed that, too, in the basket, along with some clean rags for bandaging.
Amy had awakened from her nap, and the children were playing with the animals in front of the house, Noel keeping a protective eye on his younger sister. He often seemed far older than seven, and he was curious about everything. She longed for him to learn to read and write. Of course, she longed for those skills herself, too, but her father—himself an educated man—had seen no purpose in it. He had run from his past and wanted no reminder of it, choosing to live among the Indians with whom he traded. He had decried civilization as the opposite of its definition and taken a Cherokee wife, in part to give Fancy a mother. That had completed his isolation from white society. Fancy had grown up in Indian towns and had fled along with her stepmother’s people from white influence. Thus she had never learned to read so much as a single letter.
Perhaps the Scot could change that, and teach the children as well.
The thought made her heart feel lighter.
She opened the barn door, allowing daylight to flood the interior. As her eyes adjusted to the difference in brightness, she saw the lean figure on the bed jerk to a sitting position. Apparently he’d been resting. Slowly, very slowly, he stood as she walked toward him.
“You were asleep?” she asked.
“Nay, not that,” he said.
“I brought you some food.”
“Did you, now?” Cold amusement made the question condescending.
She tried not to act as awkward as she felt, but the hostile, arrogant look on his face made her feel very much in the wrong. She knew how she and John must seem to him. People who bought other people.
“And those wrists need attention. I brought a poultice.”
“I donna need it.”
“You do, or they will become infected.”
“I see,” he said contemptuously. “You’ll be wanting to get your money’s worth.”
Her gaze met his, and a shudder ran through her at the intense anger in his vivid green eyes. Those eyes were not reflective now, nor were they empty or closed. They were filled with a simmering rage.
“We do not have money to waste,” she admitted, “and we do need help, as you have surely seen for yourself by now. But John planned only to purchase the indenture of someone who was willing to sell labor in return for passage.” She wanted to tell him about Byars, but she knew he wouldn’t listen. All he knew was that he had been sold, and bought. And she could well understand that humiliation. She’d come very, very close to it herself.
