Choices of the Heart (31 page)

They stared at him through red-rimmed eyes. All three were younger than he was by half a decade. All three had lost someone important in the worst years of the fighting—a father, a brother, a sweetheart by accident—to a Brooks. Momma had done her best to help them, but she had her own hands full, and the three had ended up wastrels. Griff got them work in the mine. They were gone more than they were there.

“We won’t work for no Gosnoll,” Jake grumbled. “He gives us the worst of it.”

“Ya shouldn’t trust our fortunes to a Gosnoll,” Jeb added.

“He’s the only one who knows anything about digging up the lead,” Griff said. “You know that. And if we don’t have workers, it doesn’t get dug up, and if it doesn’t get dug up, we don’t get any money.”

“You hear that?” The cousins exchanged glances. “He’s talkin’ like he’s some city feller, all fancy-like.”

“Must be that pretty girl of his.” Jake leered. “Never seen anything so pretty here on the mountain. Wish you hadn’t come along quite so fast. We was fixin’ to—”

“Don’t. Say. It.” Griff ground out each word.

His shoulder muscles twitched with the effort of not lashing out and knocking Jake’s teeth down his throat. Griff would not be violent. Nothing was served by striking another man. Except if he had struck Zach, his cousin wouldn’t have been stabbed and wouldn’t now be dying with Esther at his side.

“If any of you ever touches her,” Griff said, “you will be looking for another place to live.”

“You don’t own this mountain. We does,” said the youngest of the three, Seth. He was quiet and shy and did whatever his elder brother Jake told him to.

“Not enough of it.” Griff took a further step into the room and looked each man in the eye. “So which one of you stabbed my cousin Zach Brooks?”

Blank stares were the only response he got.

“Don’t play the fool with me.” He stepped a bit closer, though their stench made him think of taking a swim in the waterfall pool. “Miss Esther heard you all talking about doing in more Brookses, and then Zach was stabbed.”

“We just want rid of Henry Gosnoll,” Jake said.

“He works us too hard,” Jeb added.

“Which. One. Of. You?” Griff repeated.

More silence. More blank stares.

Then Seth shook his head, wincing. “We didn’t know he were stabbed.”

Griff glanced from face to face and knew they spoke the truth. They’d been holed up drinking for a week. They hadn’t been prowling around the mountain throwing knives at opposing family members.

“All right then.” He headed for the door. “If any of you hear who did, I’ll pay a reward for the information.”

“Snitch on our kin?” Jeb sounded shocked.

Griff didn’t look back. “Snitch on our kin to prevent a feud from starting up again. We’ve had peace for two years. I want to keep it. And you can come work the farm instead of the mine if you come tomorrow.”

It was the least he could do for the Lord, who had given him so much.

He left, taking the fourth jug of corn whiskey with him. He poured it out along the trail. Like as not, the cousins didn’t have money for more. That should drag them to the farm or back to the mine.

Griff dragged himself to the waterfall pool, where he indulged in a swim in the icy water. If Esther were his wife, they could swim there together, sun themselves on the rocks like lizards, or warm themselves—

He dressed and returned home to more news that Zach was worse than ever.

“Esther sent us a nice letter,” Momma said. “She said she’s watching over him day and night with Tamar and Hannah’s help. But he’s not doing too good.”

“It isn’t right.” Griff perched on the bench where Esther had stitched up his face. The sticking plaster had come off and the stitches itched, but the swelling had gone down and was turning all shades of green. “She shouldn’t be doing this.”

“She wants to.” Momma busied herself at the stove, stirring salt and precious pepper into a pot of something smelling of onions and chicken.

“She thinks we won’t want her back,” Griff finally admitted.

Momma stirred the stew. “Why not? She’s doing a fine job with the children, and your pa especially likes her singing.”

“I especially like her singing.”

And the smoothness of her hands beneath his as he positioned them on the dulcimer strings.

“But she thinks she’s shamed herself,” he confessed.

“Ha.” Momma slammed the lid onto the kettle. “She ain’t the one who’s done the shaming, what with you taking advantage of her like I didn’t teach you to treat a female better.”

“I forgot myself.” Griff shoved his fingers through his hair, touched the back of his neck where Esther had stroked his hair like one of her cats.

Cats he continued to feed as though she were there.

She had forgotten herself too, teased him, excited him, angered him because—God forgive him—he felt guilty for taking advantage of her. He’d been shamed when he found the letters and wondered if she had taken advantage of him, of the attraction to her that he didn’t try to hide.

“She should have slapped me,” he said.

If she had, he wouldn’t believe for a minute that anything in those letters was true. But she had returned his embrace as though she liked it, sought it, hungered for it as much as he had.

“She shouldn’t have needed to,” Momma said.

Griff rose. “No, ma’am. I know that. And you shouldn’t need to be telling me to get to work, so I’ll be about it.”

He departed for the barn and the hard, physical labor that eased the gnawing ache inside him crying out for a mate, for someone at his side in work and play, raising children and worshiping the Lord. He’d never met a girl he could put in that place until he came face-to-face with Esther Cherrett. Now the thoughts roamed at will through his head, waking him at night, distracting him during the day.

Distracted now, he was halfway across the barn before he noticed Bethann in one of the empty stalls. She stood with her back to the door, making no noise, though her shoulders heaved and shook in silent weeping.

Instinct told him to run from a crying female, especially his elder sister. She wouldn’t thank him for catching her showing such weakness. Yet he couldn’t walk away from such misery.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You all right, girl?”

“Right stupid question,” she muttered.

“Yea, that it is. But what else does a body say when he finds a crying female? Why are you crying?”

Bethann’s hand dropped to her belly. “I think you know.”

“Yes’m, I guessed.” His ears went hot. “He, um, won’t marry you?”

Bethann shook her head. “I made a fool o’ myself begging him to go off with me. But he thinks he’ll get rich staying here, with the mine producing and all.”

“You don’t have to run off to get married, Bethann. I can . . . well, I can persuade him it’s the best choice if you tell me who it is.”

She shook her head. “I won’t start no feuding again ’cause I’m an ugly spinster nobody wants. ’Cept him when he’s lonely.”

“That’s no excuse.” Griff’s body tensed. “I get lonely too, and I don’t go around ruining decent women. Or any women at all.”

“Decent?” Bethann emitted a high, piercing laugh that bore no resemblance to amusement. “I ain’t been decent for ten years, Griff. You know that.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

How he’d wanted to take up arms against the man who’d ruined her and started the feuding, but he’d left the mountain with his new bride, and when he returned a year later, he seemed invincible. One or two Tollivers had tried to gun him down. Both times he had evaded the shots, and then no one seemed to recall who was to blame for starting the fighting, as grudges formed and got settled with fists and knives and the lead they dug out of the mountain.

“I want to go away, Griff,” Bethann announced. “I ain’t no good to Momma or the young’uns or you. Can you spare me some money so I can go away?”

“I . . . can. But where would you go?”

“Don’t matter. Away.” She pulled away from him and exited the stall. “I don’t need much. Fifty dollars? Twenty-five?”

“I can’t get it straight off. It’s in a bank in Christiansburg, you know. And I can’t leave right now. Maybe you should wait until . . . um . . . after . . .”

“And see another one die? I’ll go without your money.” She stalked from the barn on silent feet like a cat, far too thin.

When had he last seen her eat more than a few mouthfuls?

She might be better off going away, finding a fresh start where no one knew her, where no one knew how she had started a family war. Somehow he would find a way to make a trip to the city and get out some of the money the mine was bringing in. What good, after all, was having the extra if he didn’t use it for the good of the family?

He should leave now, maybe put his cousins to work in the fields and with the animals instead of the mine, to keep them away from Henry Gosnoll. The different sights and sounds and smells of the journey might clear his head of the image of Esther smoothing the quilt across Zach’s bare shoulders as though she possessed more than the right of a healer to do so. Or, worse, was used to performing such actions.

He trekked back up the mountain to bring his cousins back to the farm, then packed his saddlebags and rode out the next morning.

27

Esther met Henry Gosnoll and Mr. Brooks around Zach’s bedside. They had been gone on mine business for a few days and hadn’t darkened the doorway of the sickroom until she admitted that the rest of Zach’s recovery was in God’s hands.

“Unless Mattie gets back in time with the doctor.”

And Rafe Docherty knew what to do.

“Or the Lord gives us a miracle,” Mrs. Brooks amended.

“Of course.”

A good thing Esther had stopped practicing her profession. She had stopped praying for her patients when God failed her the last time. At least if Zach died, she couldn’t blame God, for she hadn’t asked Him for a thing.

She knelt at Zach’s side, remembering the few words he had spoken to her over the days of his illness. “Beautiful. Perfect. Angel.” Nonsense he wouldn’t have to learn was untrue. She could go through life knowing one person thought those things of her.

“What’s wrong with him?” Gosnoll asked. “Other than being ambushed and stabbed.”

He was a strapping man of around thirty-five, with hair that glowed like a sunset even in the flickering lantern light, and a bony, handsome face. An intelligent man if he was running the mine, but an inattentive husband. He wasn’t even standing beside his wife, who wept silently into her apron.

“His wound has taken an infection,” Esther explained. “The fever has burned away all his strength.”

“You can’t bring it down?” His tone held an accusatory note.

Esther stiffened. “I am a midwife, Mr. Gosnoll, not a physician. I know a few things about healing, but not enough for this kind of illness.”

“Seems to me, missy,” Gosnoll returned, “that if he’s hot, he needs to be cooled down.”

“Yes, you’re right, sir.” Esther spoke in her most imperious tones. “But you all have no ice, and the bath is too small and the pond too warm.”

“What about the waterfall pool?” Gosnoll asked.

Esther arched her brows. “You expected us womenfolk to carry your brother-in-law up there?”

“We’re sorry we weren’t here.” Mr. Brooks cleared his throat. “Didn’t know he was bad off.”

“Or who done it to him. But we’ll find out, won’t we, Pa?” Sam piped up. “And we’ll kill ’im.”

Mr. Brooks cleared his throat again but said nothing.

“I’ll carry him up,” Gosnoll said. “He can’t weigh more’n a girl now. Less than my wife.” He snorted as though he’d made a joke.

Esther’s mouth opened. Hannah was nicely muscled and rounded, but far from heavy for a female of her height. She was as beautiful as her siblings, with blonde hair and blue eyes and flawless skin save for a few natural lines.

“Well?” Gosnoll snapped. “Do I do it?”

“It’s on Tolliver land,” Mr. Brooks pointed out.

“Griff’s gone,” Sam said. “Ain’t none of the rest of ’em go up there save maybe Bethann.”

Griff was gone?

Esther’s heart leaped and twisted with a struggle between relief and fear. Now she knew why she had heard nothing from the Tollivers, but the idea that he would leave in the middle of the summer wasn’t right.

“Saw Ned fishin’,” Sam explained. “He says how his brother’s gone up to the city for something he won’t say.”

Definitely more on the fear side than the relief.

“Hope he don’t hurt Mattie on the way,” Sam plodded on.

“’Specially if he thinks one of us stabbed him back in April,” Gosnoll said.

“What does it matter?” Esther cried. “Zach is dying while you worry yourselves over a ten-year-old fight. We’ve got to get him to the pool.” She lowered her voice. “It may kill him, but staying here isn’t going to save him.”

Gosnoll wrapped Zach in the quilt as though he were no larger than a child and carried him from the house. The rest of them followed, silent save for Mrs. Brooks praying and the occasional groan from Zach. Yawning, Hannah leaned on Esther’s arm, though Esther still limped a bit on her injured foot.

They reached the waterfall pool after dark. Moonlight bathed the rocky hollow and turned the waterfall into a cascade of silver, the spray to sparks. Kneeling beside the water at the still end of the pond, Esther held Zach’s head while Gosnoll eased the rest of his brother-in-law’s body into the frigid water. Through his hair, Zach’s head burned from the fever. Surely water this cold would help, if bathing in cold cloths did with lesser fevers.

Something has to
work, Lord
, she prayed at last.
Please.

Sam had voiced what no one else would say—if Zach died, the Brookses would want revenge. They wouldn’t rest until they discovered who had given the killing blow. More men would die, perhaps even Griff.

Griff, who only wanted peace, who had refused to blame anyone for his own stabbing, who had refused to strike back at Zach. Griff, who sincerely believed God would work things out if he only kept the peace and believed.

When had Zach stopped believing that too?