Choices of the Heart (21 page)

I’m not worth it
, she wanted to cry.
Don’t be fooled by this
face and form. I hurt those who care for me.

“You two are absurd.” She made herself laugh. “Griff was giving me a dulcimer lesson, and the bench was a bit too small for comfort. Did you come to listen, Zach?”

“I can’t tell one tune from another, just the rhythm for dancing,” Zach admitted. “I just came to talk.”

“Then we can all have a nice talk.” Esther smiled. “My father calls it a
cose
. He’s English, you know.”

She no longer added that he was born the son of a marquess, and now his eldest brother bore the title. He and the next brother in line all had girls—grown women now—so they faced the danger of Papa inheriting the title, and some people found the connection impressive.

Griff and Zach wouldn’t. In the few weeks she’d been in their company, she’d learned that how a man conducted himself brought far more honor to his name than any form of inherited title.

How a man or woman conducted himself or herself. If they truly knew her, they wouldn’t be fighting over her attention with glass-edged voices and belligerent stances. And they wouldn’t know, if she could help it. This was a good place to hide from the past.

She offered them both a conciliatory smile. “Being English makes my papa talk funny.”

“Is that why you talk funny too?” Griff’s tone suggested he was laughing at her.

“She doesn’t talk funny,” Zach protested. “It’s charming.”

“It’s funny,” Esther admitted. “He gave me most of my education.”

“My pa can’t read,” Zach admitted. “Momma tried, but we was too busy working.”

Griff took the dulcimer from Esther, his head bent. “I wish mine couldn’t. I’m right tired of his vengeance readings from Scripture.”

His light touch on the strings, setting them back in tune, may as well have been his fingers plucking at her heart. What pain he must suffer in wanting peace, wanting to spare his family further grief, and having a father who regretted his injury, not because it made his oldest living son have to work harder, but because it stopped him from destroying his enemies—enemies who were his family by marriage, if not blood.

“He should’ve just sent Bethann away,” Zach said, “like Pa did Hannah and Henry.”

“Or your pa should have made Gosnoll marry my sister and make things right instead of letting Hannah wed him.” Griff sat on the bench and began to play as softly as the breeze through the trees—like a distant moaning of branches bending to a greater power. “But the past can’t be undone. No sense in trying to by hurting others.”

“Except Henry still swears he’s innocent.” Zach took a step closer to Esther. “Will you go walking with me tomorrow, Miss Esther? That’s what I come to ask.”

“I . . .” A walk was always lovely, but she’d so enjoyed singing with the Tollivers last Sunday, she didn’t want to miss it again.

“Go ahead.” Griff tossed a smile her way. “We can play together anytime.”

Esther caught her breath at the implication of his words.

“That,” Zach ground out, “was uncalled-for.”

“It was. I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely contrite with his head bent over the dulcimer. “I was just teasing a wee bit too far.”

Esther stepped over the threshold of her cabin. “I am turning in for the night, gentlemen. I’ll see you both tomorrow then.” She closed the door in their faces but lingered shamelessly to listen.

“I thought you weren’t going to court her,” Zach said.

“I’m not.” Griff strummed the dulcimer with the strings open. “She likes music and so do I, is all.”

“You were mauling her.”

Griff laughed. “I was keeping her from falling off the bench.”

“But you like her, don’t you?”

“Like her?” The music stopped.

Esther held her breath.

“Zach, if I thought she’d take either of us, I’d say forget anything I claimed and court her myself. There, that satisfy you?”

“Yea, I reckon it does.”

“Good. Now go away. I’m for my bed.”

But he didn’t go after Zach departed. He remained on the bench, playing softly, so softly the music likely didn’t carry to the house. But it carried to Esther’s chamber behind the schoolroom like a fragrance soft and sweet, lilacs or roses drifting through the window, elusive like violets.

She’d never been wooed with music. Its power made her glad she needed to keep her distance from the musician. Too easily that music could lure her as nothing ever had, and that wasn’t just out of the question, it was dangerous. She would get her heart broken when the truth inevitably came out.

For now, however, she would enjoy the fact that neither man repulsed her. Griff’s nearness intimidated her because she liked it, but it didn’t make her stomach curdle. Momma had said it would happen—the healing—but she hadn’t believed it was so. Yet it was happening there in the clear mountain air so far from the sand of Seabourne.

Tomorrow she had music to look forward to, and a walk in the forest. She was happier than she had been in nearly five months.

18

Nothing feels so
much like a rabbit that two dogs claimed as their
kill.
Esther wrote an imaginary letter to her parents as she washed out her chemises and stockings and hung them to dry in her room to preserve her modesty.
They circle around me and snap and growl at one
another, and I want nothing to do with either of
them.

It was too much like home, too much like the time before her final contretemps with Alfred Oglevie. Only it was worse. These were cousins from families barely managing to hold a peaceful coexistence on the same mountain, and she was supposed to help that peaceful process progress.

“If the boys will settle down and get themselves family,” Mrs. Tolliver said one night over the washing up, “this feud talk’ll end. Neither of them wants it. ’Course now . . .” She rolled her eyes toward Bethann’s room above the kitchen and shrugged. “Well, the boys will never carry things on no matter what.”

Mrs. Tolliver hadn’t seen the way Zach glared at Griff when he came across her taking another music lesson. Griff, fortunately, didn’t interfere with Zach’s reading lessons. In fact, he stayed away from the schoolhouse, preserving his cousin’s pride. But he hadn’t let her be in Zach’s sole company at any time since that first Sunday walk.

“I’m responsible for you,” he told her. “I have to make sure you’re safe.”

“Of course I’m safe. I’m with Zach. He’s the most polite man I know.”

“Uh-huh” was all Griff responded.

“We don’t trust Brookses and Gosnolls,” Brenna said later. “They’re all liars and cheats.”

“Then why does Henry Gosnoll run your mine?” Esther asked.

Brenna shrugged. “He knows more about mining than anybody around, and Griff didn’t want some outsider cheating us.”

“He’d rather a Gosnoll cheated you?” Esther responded before thinking perhaps she shouldn’t say something like that to a child.

But Griff overheard and responded for himself. “I’d know where and how to find Henry if he does. It keeps him honest knowing that I know. And speaking of the mine, do you want to ride up there with me tomorrow?”

“As long as I can stay above ground. I don’t want to go down any shafts.”

Griff laughed. “It’s not that deep yet, but no, you don’t have to go down anywhere. It’s just a ride.”

They left after breakfast, passing through a part of the forest Esther hadn’t yet seen. Much of the path led along the edge of a ravine that dropped off to more forest and a few plumes of smoke that suggested habitation.

“How do they get down there?” Esther asked.

“Walking, mules. Those are mostly Gosnolls and make their living cooking whiskey.”

“Isn’t that against the law?”

“It is, but nobody ever finds a thing if they come looking. You can’t approach a holler like that without giving yourself away.”

“No, I suppose you can’t.” Esther shivered.

Men died trying to clear out illegal distilleries.

But the scenery was stunning, so lush and green and majestic. Trees opened out into meadows full of wildflowers, and every tree seemed to hold a flock of some kind of bird.

Then they rode right up to a cliff overlooking the river clear and sparkling fifty feet below. “No wonder you love this place,” she breathed in awe.

Griff turned in his saddle and smiled at her. “I thought you’d understand. It’s a pity to spoil it with the mine, but times was so hard, we couldn’t say no. What’s a few trees gone if my family can eat?”

His eyes held such a bleakness, Esther reached out and touched his hand on the reins. He released them and curled his fingers into hers. For several minutes, they sat there in silence, then his roan gelding began to shift. Griff released Esther’s fingers and headed along the cliff path. “We’ll only be a short time,” Griff tossed over his shoulder. “I know you have school in a bit. But I wanted to show you this and had to come pick up some ledgers.”

And she had come because she was curious to meet the infamous Henry Gosnoll, who had gotten himself mining experience in Georgia. That and spend some time riding—with Griff.

She had yet to meet any of the Brookses or Gosnolls other than the boys, Zach, and Hannah. Tamar Brooks suffered from rheumatism, though she was younger than Mrs. Tolliver, and rarely left their house, and Esther hadn’t seen Hannah since her arrival.

Henry wasn’t in the mining office, a log shack perched atop a shaft gouging an ugly hole into the forest. But Hannah was, writing something in the ledgers she handed to Griff without looking directly at him. She didn’t speak to Esther.

Hannah did speak to Esther the Sunday before the Independence Day celebration. She strode through the Tollivers’ gate as though she called daily, then leaned against the post a hundred feet from the front porch, where the family had gathered for their afternoon singing. She lifted a hand, and Esther excused herself, figuring Hannah wanted to ask about the boys’ progress with their lessons—fair at best—or perhaps was having trouble with her hand.

“How are you?” Esther asked by way of greeting.

“All right.” She looked a little pale but otherwise healthy. “My hand’s healed up right well.” She held it out. A few marks showed where she had burned herself.

“It’s the elder leaves. They do wonders.” Esther smiled. “Do you want to come up to the porch?”

“No, I want to talk to you. Can we walk?”

“All right.” Esther waved to the family ranged before the house—with the exception of Bethann, who had vanished from sight—then turned back to Hannah.

“That female better disappear from my sight,” Hannah muttered.

“I beg your pardon?” A stupid response if ever Esther had given one.

Hannah didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. Bethann disappeared from the sight of anyone who came to the Tolliver house. Her family let her stay with them because they were kind and loving toward one another, but she shamed them with others. The outspoken mountain folk weren’t afraid to say what they thought of such a wayward female who had started a small war.

“So how may I help you today?” Esther broke the silence between them.

Hannah picked up a stick from the ground and began to whack it against the underbrush as they entered the woods. “I want to tell you to stay away from my brother.”

“I . . . beg your pardon?” This time the response was not stupid. Esther stopped on the path and stared. “But I thought—”

“You thought our mothers said you’d make a good wife for one of them. Well, you won’t.”

“Of course not. I said weeks ago I wasn’t interested in anything but what I’m hired for.”

Hannah’s pale blue eyes flared. “But you lead him on like you do, giving him ideas.”

“I make it clear there’s nothing—”

Esther closed her eyes. What she said and what she did didn’t always match up. She only took Zach’s arm as they walked, but he’d seen her sitting side by side with Griff during lessons and once just talking without the dulcimer between them, and perhaps Zach thought—

“I didn’t think.” She rubbed her eyes. “Is he angry with his cousin or me?”

“Zach is always angry with somebody.”

“What?” Esther’s hands dropped. Her jaw dropped. “He never says an unkind word about anyone. When he’s with me, he’s the most cheerful person I know.”

“He pretends good.” Hannah jabbed the stick into the ground. “If a girl who looks like you ain’t the marrying kind, there’s something wrong with you, and maybe we made a mistake bringing you, ’specially if you make Zach and Griff stop being friends.”

“I see.” Esther leaned toward Hannah, trying to see more. “Hannah, did you leave that note on my door my first day here?”

“Note? Me?” Hannah opened her eyes too wide. “No, ma’am, I can’t write.”

But when Esther had gone to the mine with Griff, she had seen Hannah making notes in a ledger.

“Why do you want me to go?” Esther asked.

“Strangers always cause trouble here,” Hannah said, then snapped her stick in two and walked away.

Esther gazed after her, certain Hannah had left the note because she had heard something in Seabourne. Worse, Hannah seemed to know something she wouldn’t say.