Choices of the Heart (13 page)

“Can I keep it?” Jack asked.

“May I,” Ned corrected him.

“Yea, may I?” Jack persisted, gazing up at Esther as though she were truly in charge of him.

“I, um, don’t know.” She lifted her hand palm up. “My only experience with birds is listening to them or watching them catch fish. I’ve never tried to keep one.”

“You shouldn’t.” Zach stepped forward and slid the creature from Jack’s hands to his. It disappeared into his broad palm. “He needs to be fed, and he’s meant for the trees, not a cage.”

“I could keep him in my room.” Jack’s eyes shone. “It has a tree outside the window he could fly to.”

“He isn’t old enough to fly or take care of himself.” Zach raised a finger to touch the bird’s head. “He’s still young. Where did you find him? We should put him back before he smells too much like human for his momma to want him.”

“It was down this way by the waterfall.” Ned plunged into the underbrush.

Jack and Zach followed, leaving Esther standing alone on the path, the woods quiet save for birdsong high above and the soughing of the wind through the branches. No, not the wind. The leaves didn’t so much as tremble, so the breeze must lay still across the forest. Yet that rushing-water sigh poured over her ears with familiar sweetness.

Rushing water. The waterfall, of course. Ned had said they found the sparrow by the waterfall. But she couldn’t follow them through the shrubbery growing along the ground and over fallen logs. She would ruin her dress.

She glanced up and down the trail in search of a path leading deeper into the trees and on to that glorious, sighing tumble of water.

She stumbled upon the graveyard first.

11

Griff found her kneeling beside one of the plain wooden crosses marking the graves of previous Tollivers. Carved upon them with varying degrees of skill were the names and dates of those whose remains lay beneath the soil, from Griff’s great-grandparents twenty years earlier to a few cousins, some dead from sickness, others from outbursts of fighting.

She paused beside the grave of Griff’s nephew. “He was so young,” she said. “Was it a fever?”

“No, it was a fall.” Griff’s voice emerged far more harshly than he intended.

She jumped and twisted around, her face pale beneath the overarching canopy of branches and leaves. “I thought you were Zach.”

“I thought you were with Zach. Not kind of him to leave you alone.” The roughness wouldn’t leave his voice.

“He went to restore a sparrow to its nest for the boys.” She rocked back on her heels, her gown billowing around her in soft blue folds like a wind-ruffled pool. “I heard the waterfall and tried to find it.”

“You will if you keep going.”

“I thought so. But I saw these, and Brenna mentioned something about a baby dying?” One curved brow rose.

Griff stared at a lightning-struck tree he should cut down before it fell in a windstorm and crushed the crosses. “Bethann’s. She was twenty-five and too ornery for anyone to marry, but it happened, and the fighting started.”

Esther gasped. “And they killed an infant? You must have a wonderfully forgiving spirit to make peace after that.”

“Not anything special. I just know an accident when I see it.”

Father falling. The baby falling. Bethann screaming. Griff holding her back from leaping off the cliff.

“Whatever you say of Bethann, she loved her baby,” he added. “And she was always good when the others were babies. She just scares off the men.”

Esther muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “I understand.” But he must be mistaken. Esther Cherrett couldn’t scare off men. Her beauty alone must draw them in like bees to a hyacinth.

“And Bethann wasn’t pretty,” he added. “Even up here, looks matter.”

“She’s scarcely ugly.” Esther placed one foot flat on the ground as though she intended to rise. “She’d be prettier if she gained some weight and smiled a bit.”

“And didn’t look like she was chewing an unripe persimmon.” Griff smiled.

Esther smiled and started to rise. The toe of her foot pressed down on a fold of her gown, throwing her off balance.

Griff caught her hand to steady her. A jolt, like he was standing next to that tree when the lightning struck it, raced through him. A flare of light in her eyes and a hint of pink in her cheeks suggested she felt it too. She tried to snatch her hand free of his grasp.

“Don’t be a fool.” He held fast. “You’ll fall over if you do that.”

Her complexion grew darker. She ran her tongue over her lower lip, then bent her head. “Please let go. I don’t like to be touched.”

“I noticed that.”

He’d also noticed her trotting off into the forest with Zach like they were a courting couple. But she hadn’t looked anything more than interested in what he said to her. No flush. No blaze in her eyes, no tongue peeping out to moisten dry lips.

“But you’re going to have trouble getting up on your own,” he pointed out.

“Not at all.”

And she didn’t. She tugged her gown free, then rose in one graceful motion, her gaze averted from him the entire time.

“I think I’ll continue to the waterfall,” she said.

“I’ll go with you.” He offered her his arm as he’d glimpsed Zach do earlier. He hadn’t been spying; he’d been coming out of the barn and caught a glimpse of them through the gateway. “You shouldn’t go walking through here on your own.”

“The wild animals?” She walked beside him but didn’t tuck her hand into the crook of his elbow.

He glanced at her, hesitated, then gave her the truth. “No, they won’t bother you, especially not in the daylight. I’m talking about the kind of animal with two legs. We have a lot of pretty girls on the mountain, but none who—”

She held up a staying hand, probably the first female he’d met who didn’t want a compliment.

“Some men haven’t any manners,” he finished instead.

“What men? I haven’t seen a soul.”

“You will. They’re around. Tollivers. Gosnolls. Brookses. Neffs. We’re scattered through these hollers like dandelion seeds on a breeze.”

“Cousins?”

“Cousins, aunts, uncles. Momma had eleven brothers and sisters, and most of ’em lived.”

The path narrowed, and he moved ahead of her to hold branches out of her way and clear out spiderwebs strung across the trail, foul and sticky, some bristling with unfortunate flies. Neither of them spoke. Only an occasional trill of birdsong broke the stillness beneath the trees.

Then the trees ended in a cascade of irregular steps created from the natural rock sprouting out of the mountainside like gray-brown flowers. Saplings and scrubby bushes sprang from the rocks, clinging to life in meager soil. But those bushes, for all their spindly size, shone green in the early summer sunshine, and at the foot of the hillside a pool sparkled and shimmered, foaming white at the base of the waterfall and smoothing out to a clear blue reflection of the sky farther out.

Griff turned back to catch the wide-eyed expression of wonder on Esther’s face, and something twisted in his middle. He couldn’t breathe. His offer for help caught in his throat. He held out his hand, and she took it. Wordlessly they descended the rocks. He clung to her hand. If she spoke, the burbling splash of the cascade drowned out her voice.

Then they reached the bottom, the jumble of rocks that surrounded the edge of the pool, and she snatched her hand free. She tucked her fingers beneath her own upper arms as though hugging herself, and studied the scenery, her head moving slowly from side to side, scanning the vista as though it were a book she intended to put to memory.

Griff stood beside her and watched and waited. This was his retreat, his escape from the chaos often reigning in the house, the cares of being in charge of his family instead of seeking a wife to build his own. This was where he talked to God about his fears and frustrations with Bethann’s behavior, Brenna’s growing sullenness, futures for the boys and the girls, and his pain-racked father. The only one he didn’t worry about was Momma. Momma was strong in body, mind, and faith in God’s promise to take care of a body.

Griff wished he were that strong. Everything from whether or not Henry Gosnoll would cheat them over the lead to whether or not they would grow enough corn to last the winter, even though they could now afford to buy it, concerned him. Now he had one more person to worry over—Esther Cherrett. She lived on his land. She was his responsibility. She too seemed strong, capable of taking care of herself. She captivated him like those flies caught in the spiderweb—an unpleasant image.

Attraction to her was unpleasant. It was the uneasy tenseness of knowing something was amiss and not being able to put his finger on exactly the cause of the discomfort in his middle.

The water gleamed before him, and he longed to dive into its icy depths, swim off the tension plaguing him, lie in the sun to warm, and talk to God about what ailed him.

Talk to God about the woman beside him.

He turned to her beside him instead. “There’s no bottom to the pool that anyone’s found. The stream must go underground here and end up in the river. It’s not far off.”

“It’s lovely. I want to come back with my drawing things.” She laughed. “Not that chalks could do justice to this.”

“Paints? Painters come through here sometimes. They want us to show them places like this.”

“Do you bring them?”

“Not here. This is . . . private.”

“Is it your land?”

“Probably. Hard to say where the Brookses’ land ends and ours starts. We never much cared about boundaries before . . .” He fixed his gaze on the narrow but deep cataract of water foaming down the sheer cliff of rock, then below to the pond that the force of the water had carved over hundreds, maybe thousands, of years or more—a force far stronger than he. “Miss Esther, we were wrong to bring you here. We never should have done something so unfair without telling you the whole truth about the fighting.”

“But it’s quiet now.” She tucked her hands beneath her arms again. “Isn’t it? Nothing’s happened—oh.” Her gaze dropped to his side.

He pressed his hand to the healed wound. “That could have been someone intent on robbing me who got scared off.”

“Are robberies on the trail common?”

“Common enough. Hannah came back to see where I’d gone and found me. Her coming might have scared the ambusher off.”

Or she knew her brother had done something wrong and wanted to save him.

But no, he mustn’t let Bethann’s suspicions taint his thinking. Zach wouldn’t hurt him. The fighting had never stopped him and Zach from being friends, as they had been friends since they were infants only hours apart in age. Zach would never assault him like that.

“Yea, robbers, most like. That’s why you shouldn’t go about on your own. This may be Tolliver and Brooks land, but all sorts of folk hide out here in the woods, bad men running from the law sometimes. There’s a hundred caves they can camp in.” A shudder ran through her, and he touched her shoulder. “I don’t mean to scare you. Nothing happens much. Just warning you to be cautious and at least come here with the boys. They’ll protect you.”

“Two children will protect me?” He couldn’t hear for sure but thought she snorted. “I’ll manage.”

“Those boys never go anywhere unarmed. They both carry knives.”

“And you?” She scanned him from head to toe as though searching for a bristle of blades or the protruding butt of a gun.

The perusal warmed him, and he fixed his attention on the icy water. “Yea, but I never tell anyone where I keep my blades. Easy to disarm me if a body knows where to look.”

A half smile curved her lips, then she stepped closer to the pool, her skirt swaying. He expected her to bow her head. Instead, she raised her face to the sky, a golden disk of sunlight blazing from the pale blue. She held out her arms as though embracing the pool, the waterfall, the surrounding rocky cliffs.

And Griff feared he could too easily be attracted to a girl like her.

But then a shout followed by another broke their wordless camaraderie beneath the gushing water, and his brothers and Zach burst onto the ledge atop the waterfall. Esther glanced up. Griff noted the stillness of her body, a tight pose, not relaxed. He could not see her face. But he could see Zach’s.

Zach’s expression lit as though he faced the sun and wasn’t looking down. He called something inaudible over the water, then ran back to the tree line. A few moments later, he appeared, the boys following, on another shelving path descending to the pool. He scrambled too quickly, sending pebbles and dirt cascading ahead of him. His boot heels slid the last dozen feet, and he sprinted forward to clasp Esther’s hands.

“We went back to the path and you weren’t there. You should have stayed put.”

“You shouldn’t have left her.” The roughness had returned to Griff’s voice. A band had tightened around his chest. “You know it’s not safe.”

Zach laughed and shrugged that off. “She was right safe in broad daylight, Griff. Weren’t you, Miss Esther?”

“I thought I was, but Mr. Tolliver tells me I wasn’t.”

Zach shot Griff a cold glare. “You shouldn’t go around scaring her. She’ll leave when she’s barely arrived.”

“Someone wants her to.” Griff set his hands on his hips and glowered at his cousin. “Didn’t she tell you about the note?”

“Note, what note?” Zach switched his attention back to Esther. “You didn’t say anything.”

“It was nothing. A prank. I’m certain me finding this place was worth any small bit of danger anyway.” She tilted her head toward the waterfall and smiled—because of the waterfall or Zach standing so close to her?

For the first time in the past ten years, Griff understood Bethann’s hostility toward the Brookses and Gosnolls. They had taken all that was precious to her. Though saying Esther Cherrett was precious to him was a bit premature, Griff suspected she could be, and a Brooks had taken away his chance to even attempt to find out, because Griff Tolliver had principles.

He was supposed to trust in God for this. God would provide a wife, Momma always told him from the time he started thinking of such things—later than most men on the mountain because he was too busy helping out his family. He believed her. He believed in God’s promise to supply all a man’s needs.