Virginia Autumn (Sinclair Legacy Book 2), page 14
Suddenly he was directly in front of her. Leah’s heart jerked once when his fingers enfolded hers. His thumb smoothed over her knuckles. “I see what you’re doing, dismissing me. It’s not going to work,” he said under his breath. “We both know better now. Give up the act, Miss Sinclair.”
He straightened. “Take care of that arm,” he finished in a normal voice. “Meredith, I need to ensure that the horses are stabled and taken care of properly. They belong to the driver of our one-time coach. Have someone send for me, please, when Ben returns?” He gently tweaked little Samuel’s nose, sent Leah a last inscrutable glance, and left.
Meredith was looking at her strangely. If Cade had still been standing in front of Leah’s chair, she would have kicked his shin. Either way, whatever hopes bubbled inside Meredith’s head would soon be popped. Leah refused to allow her to build castles of air that tomorrow’s brisk wind of reality would blow away. An abrupt change of subject, designed to startle, worked best. “This will be a shock for Mr. Covington’s family. By the way, you didn’t notify Papa, did you?”
Right on cue, Meredith’s jaw dropped. “Papa? Mercysake, I forgot. I was so glad to see you that I completely forgot. Of course we notified Papa that you were missing. He needed to know. Besides, I wanted him here, especially if something awful had happened. I, well, I needed him. Praying with us, for you. I know talking about it makes you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry. But it’s the truth. We received his return telegram this morning. He’s on the way, should be here on today’s six o’clock stage run.” Dry humor kindled her hazel eyes, turning them almost as green as Cade’s. “The one you should have been on yesterday evening.”
Leah creaked to her feet. “Then you better show me to my room, sister dear. If Papa sees me in this state, it might bring on an ulcer attack.”
“Mercysake, yes! So.” Her manner turned brisk. “Did you salvage any of your luggage? Good. All my gowns would be far too big for you, unfortunately. Yours are sure to need pressing, at the very least. Let me fetch Gabby—that’s Sam’s new mammy, who’s wonderful, by the way. She’s a friend of Hominy’s. Then I’ll take you right up. You’re in the same suite as last year.” She fiddled with the sash at her waist for a moment, looking all of a sudden uncertain. “Leah?”
“Yes?”
“I—We were praying for you. I just wondered . . . ” she made a face, then with typical Meredith impulsiveness blurted it straight out, “Did you know? Sense it? Feel God’s Presence with you, taking care of you? I know you don’t like talking about, well, spiritual matters. I just . . . I just needed to know. Because Papa would never mention it but he’s, well, you know what he’s like. And I keep—Sam! No, you don’t . . . ”
Leah watched her sister rescue Samuel from climbing up the back of a chair, her actions swift but unalarmed. Her expression softened as she lovingly scolded her son.
Fatigue, bone-deep and laden with helplessness, threatened to suck Leah into a bottomless whirlpool. At the moment, she and her sister were separated by a far wider distance than a few yards of oriental carpet. “I’m sorry, Meredith.” Her voice was leaden. “I wanted to”—she’d always wanted to—“but no. I didn’t hear God’s voice, didn’t sense His Presence, not the way you and Benjamin and Garnet and Sloan do. And Papa.”
And Cade. Above all . . . Cade.
It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair . . . No matter how hard she tried, how many nights through the years she obediently tried to “talk to the Lord,” tried to listen until she thought the silence would deafen her, God had not deemed her worthy of an audience. And her family considered her . . . lacking. Jesus might have died for her sins, but His Spirit filled the lives of her sisters, their husbands, her father . . . Cade. Not Leah. Apparently never Leah. She was who and what she always had been. Alone. All her life, faith for her had consisted solely of the deep determination of her will to believe in something and Someone whose existence could not be proven or logically explained utilizing any known scientific method.
“I’m sorry,” she told Meredith again, wincing at the disappointment shadowing her sister’s face. “But I won’t lie about it.”
“I wouldn’t want you to lie. And I don’t want to push. It’s just that I couldn’t have made it through this past night without knowing, somewhere deep inside, that not only was God here, giving me strength. Hope. He was also with you.” She searched Leah’s face with anxious eyes, heavy-handed in her love. “You believe that, don’t you, Leah? Even if you can’t feel God, you do know He’s there?”
“Yes, Meredith. I know God is there.”
But the only person whose presence she had felt watching over her, whose voice she had heard, had been Cade Beringer’s.
Seventeen
For Jacob, the reunion with his youngest daughter was marred only by one small imperfection. ’Twas a little thing, in comparison with her relative good health, of course. But all the same, Jacob thought as he waited after supper for Leah to join him for a quiet walk, he wished he’d not been the only one of them shedding tears of joy.
“I’m here, Papa.”
He turned, smiling a bit. “You look lovely, lass. You sure you’re wanting to stroll? We could go on up to the family suite. There’s a pair of comfortable chairs in the sitting room, if you’re tired.”
“I’m not too tired. And I look presentable, not lovely,” she corrected him, reaching up to brush a kiss against his cheek. “I prefer a stroll. It’s a little more private. Do you know, by the time we finished supper I was almost ready to return to the campground Cade made for us last night. At least it was quiet.” She stopped abruptly, then gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”
Now what was that all about? Lips pursed, Jacob escorted her across the small parlor on the main floor, where he’d been waiting. “Where would you like to stroll, then? ’Tis a fine night again, just as last night.” The doorman ushered them onto the front porch. Piazza, Ben and Meredith called it, though to Jacob’s way of thinking a front porch was a front porch, regardless of whether it fronted a house or a grand hotel the length of a city block. “Another bit of God’s grace, such good weather.”
The silence all but deafened him. He shook his head, then took her arm as they descended the stairs. For several moments they walked in silence down the broad elliptical drive, eschewing the many walking paths that led to the springs or wandered through peaceful woods. Though the main drive was well lighted with ironwork post lamps that haloed the silhouettes of other strolling guests, an air of seclusion enfolded them; Jacob’s heart filled once more with a tranquillity that had been absent since Benjamin’s telegram arrived.
“Tell me what’s troubling you, lass,” he said after allowing sufficient time for Leah to organize her thoughts.
Daughters, Jacob had learned, taught a man patience. And the blessed Lord knew Jacob had needed a bucketful of it for his three, Meredith with her stubbornness, Garnet with a core of insecurity born of an ugly summer afternoon her sixteenth year . . . and Leah. Och, Leah with her fearful intelligence and servant’s heart. For most of his life his youngest had left Jacob floundering as he struggled to understand her.
“You’ve something to tell me,” he continued now after a sideways perusal. “And contrary to your dinner table blandishments, ’tis not merely to reassure me yet again that you’re hale and hearty. We’d already determined that, from the moment I held you in my arms when I stepped off the stage.”
“There wasn’t an opportunity at dinner. Meredith was hovering. Benjamin was—brotherly. Hominy was ready to track down Lester Turpin. And Samuel was crawling under the table. He pulled my napkin out of my lap and smeared peas all over my shoes.”
Jacob chuckled. She sounded outraged, her notion of children’s proper behavior sorely tried. “He’s a braw one and more of a handful than his mother at that age. The next years will be interesting. What they need is a passel of wee ones to give Master Sam a bit of competition.” He paused. “So, Leah, were you wanting to complain about your sister’s mothering? Is that what this is all about?”
“Of course not, Papa.”
“Don’t assume that tone with me, lass.” He stopped directly beneath one of the lamps, turning Leah so that he could see her expression, difficult even in daylight due to her formidable control. “You’re a grown woman on your own now, with a life and a profession that has granted you power, and a fair amount of authority. But don’t ever forget that I’m your father, not one of your students.”
“Papa, I’m sorry. I do need to talk with you. But what I have to ask you is difficult for me, for all I’m twenty-five and ought to know better.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Especially since I seem to spend as much time counseling young ladies on the matter as I do teaching them physics and household management.”
“Ah.” Jacob brushed a lock of fine brown hair from her forehead, then stepped away to clasp his hands behind his back. “Cade Beringer.”
He waited, and had in truth resigned himself to failure when she lifted a hand in a futile gesture and simply said, “Yes.”
In one accord they resumed their stroll, occasionally nodding to other guests.
“It’s not because he saved my life,” Leah murmured after a while, almost to herself. “If nothing else, I’ve at least convinced myself this isn’t gratitude, or mere hero worship.” Then, “I can’t make sense of it all, there’s no reason. It’s not logical.”
“What isn’t, lass?”
“I wish he’d accepted Meredith’s invitation to join us for supper. I could have watched, could have reached some form of a conclusion from the way he treated me when family members were present.”
Jacob’s benign patience faltered. “And how, may I ask, would that differ from the way he treats you when you’re no’ with family?”
“It’s all right, Papa. You won’t have to fetch Great-grandfather’s claymore from the attic. Cade was a perfect gen—” She broke off, her breath rippling with impatience. “No. He wasn’t so much a perfect gentlemen, as he was a-a caring man. Competent, composed, compassionate. We were all of us fortunate to have had him along as guardian and guide.”
Jacob grunted assent. He knew better than to start an argument over their differing perspectives on fortunate. “Then why the long face?”
“Because”—she plucked a leaf from one of the trees flanking the lane, twirling it between her fingers—“I don’t know what to do about this surfeit of emotion that seems to fill me up, whenever I’m around him. It’s ridiculous for me to entertain any sort of feeling for Cade Beringer other than gratitude.” She practically hurled the words.
A fringed surrey approached, and Jacob waited until the sound of clip-clopping hooves and laughing voices faded into the night. “Why not? You’re not still harboring those old thoughts, are you? Comparing yourself to your sisters and coming up lacking?”
“It’s not necessary to compare, only to accept who and what I am. That’s what you’ve always taught us, what the Bible itself teaches.” She thrust the leaf under Jacob’s nose. “Do you see this leaf? It’s a yellow poplar. Liriodendron tulipifera. Whether it grows here at a fancy resort hotel in the southern Appalachians, or in the back yard of a sharecropper’s two-room shanty, it will always be a yellow poplar.”
“Leah, that’s not—”
“Unusual leaf, with this broad tip and a base that almost resembles a square. It’s not saw-toothed and long-pointed like a slippery elm or pinnately compound like a black locust. God created this poplar, Papa, to be what it is.” Lightly she brushed the leaf over her face. “The same way He created me.”
Ah, Lord. Give me the words. “You saw I brought along your heart-wood chest?” All the way from home Jacob had held the chest on his lap, on the train, then the stage. It was a part of Leah, and he had needed to keep it with him to survive not knowing where she was. “Did you open the secret drawer, before you came down for supper?”
“No. I saw no purpose in it. Why? This year did you replace the flower bulb with something other than another bulb? One of these leaves would provide an appropriate object lesson.”
Sadly Jacob shook his head.
“Then there’s no need to belabor the point. And certainly no need to have toted the thing all the way up here. Obviously I still fail to grasp what you’ve been trying to communicate all these years.”
Suddenly she stopped dead, whirled toward Jacob. The leaf drifted forgotten into the darkness. “Papa, did you know that Cade was going to be here? At the same time I was invited?”
“And if I did?”
Leah froze, the pale oval face as distant and chilly as a winter moon. “Then whatever hopes you and Meredith and Benjamin and—and God concocted among yourselves about Cade and me are a waste of energy. Meredith I can ignore. I’d halfway anticipated her handiwork. But you of all people should know better. If not for the accident, Cade and I would already have gone our separate ways.” Something dark, riddled with pain, stirred in her eyes. “This infatuation of his will die a natural death as well, now that we’re here. If you must—”
“Infatuated, is he?” Jacob interrupted. “Cade’s not a man to allow his interest in a lass to show if she was merely a passing fancy. And you’ve plainly told me that he stirs feelings in you. Good can come of tragedy, remember. It’s possible, to my way of thinking, that the Lord has had a hand in bringing the two of you back together.” He ignored her groan of frustration. “Why not give the lad a chance?”
“A chance to do what? Papa, think. Cade’s a wanderer like Garnet. He needs open spaces, to commune with nature, as it were. My life is in a classroom, in a city. His faith moves mountains. Mine at best could move a grain of sand in a high wind. He’s an idealist who harbors illusions about human nature that, frankly, appall me.” For a second, desperation tightened her jaw. Then she ducked her head so Jacob could no longer read her face.
After an uncomfortable silence she cleared her throat, lifted her head, and smiled a bittersweet smile that would haunt Jacob for weeks. “You’ve always loved analogies, Papa. Let me phrase it this way for you. I’d rather stay like the bulb you stuff inside my heartwood chest. It may be ugly and dried up, but at least it’s safe, in a familiar place. It won’t ever be crushed by a storm or wither from lack of water, after a drop or two coaxed it into budding.”
“Och, little wren . . . ” He cupped her cheeks in his scarred workman’s hands. “All these years, it’s the wrong lesson you’ve learned. The wrong one. That’s not why I put the bulb in your drawer. Think on it. What would happen if you planted that bulb in good rich soil? If you kept it watered, nurtured it as it grew? It would grow into a beautiful flower, no longer that ugly bulb. But that’s not why I—”
She shook her head so vehemently Jacob cut himself off. Peering through the darkness, it came to him how she was suffering, suffering more deeply than he would have thought possible. Why, she’s as vulnerable as Garnet and Meredith ever were. The shock was a fist in Jacob’s belly, because he’d never seen it, not once in all these years. Until now, Leah had never allowed him a glimpse of her inmost soul. She’d built her walls sturdy and strong, shielding herself not only from the rest of a cruel world, but from her own father.
What have I done to this daughter of mine, when my only prayer was to bring her up in the way she needed to go, to become the woman You designed her to be? He opened his mouth, desperate with love, clumsy from the magnitude of his error. All he had intended was to explain his motivation for placing a flower bulb in the secret drawer of her heart-wood chest. He would have done anything, anything at all to erase that look of grief and pain.
Instead, Leah leaned into him, brushed a kiss against his cheek, then gently tugged his hands away. “I’m sure the bulb would make a beautiful flower,” she said. “But I’m way beyond the season for blooming, Papa. I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you. No matter how hard I try to keep it watered, my faith will never equal yours or Meredith’s and Garnet’s. If the results aren’t to our liking, you’ll have to do what you always do, with such success. Talk to God. When He gives you any insight, I wouldn’t mind if you passed it along.”
Wrought-iron benches were placed about the manicured expanse of lawn surrounded by the main drive. After Leah returned inside the hotel, Jacob sought out one of the benches, where he then spent a goodly time in prayer, mindful of Leah’s parting words.
He had failed her, he now knew. Failed his youngest daughter in so many ways, because for too long—all her life?—he’d not made the effort to see beyond her implacably cheerful facade or the thirst for knowledge she substituted for a thirst for God.
Father, forgive me.
Now he knew it was because Leah felt she had no other choice. How could she trust the One she held responsible for her very nature?
Jacob braced his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. This had to be his doing, his fault. His fault, not hers, that she felt unworthy to be loved. There was a burning deep in his belly, but he almost welcomed the pain. It was only justice that he suffer for the arrogance of his heart, so smug in his role of wise father that he’d been blinded to a fundamental lesson of parenthood: Right lessons could still be learned wrongly, with children suffering lifelong consequences.
The eight-year-old Leah who demanded an explanation for the flower bulb was no longer a child. In some ways, unlike Meredith and Garnet, she never had been. And Mary . . . Mary had died when Leah was not even four years old. For all intents and purposes his youngest daughter had grown up with no memory of a mother’s love to soften a father’s mistakes, however well-intentioned.
Jesus. Jesus. I have not been a good example of Your love.
A breeze stirred the branches of the trees that screened the bench on three sides, setting the leaves to whispering. Jacob lifted his head. The splinter of a moonbeam sliced through the darkness directly onto his face, flooding him with the sensation of absolution and affirmation. His eyes dampened with tears. Borne on the soundless melody of the breeze, familiar words filled him up, bringing him back to a place of peace once more. The Lord knew, had always known, the intention of Jacob’s heart . . . Good things could still result from man’s sinful nature, because with God all things, in all ways, were working together for the good of those who loved Him.
