“Coo-wigh-wigh-wigh!”
“Now, just hold on there, Simon,” Seth warned. “I’ve yet to
close out the bidding. The bid is eight bucks to Peavey . . . eight
bucks goin’ once . . .” He raised the cowbell. “Eight bucks goin’
twice . . .”
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
121
“Ten dollars!”
Standing far left of the crowd of bachelors, dusty and grimy
Tom Roberts pushed his hat back, leaned on his rifle, and smiled
through a scruffy beard. His faded blue shirt was ringed with
salt stains and dark with sweat. In his right hand he cupped a
leather sack heavy with coin. Maggie restrained an urge to run to
him, happier at that moment than she could ever remember being
in her whole life.
“Ten dollars once,” Seth shouted, smiling. “Ten dollars
twice . . .”
“Fifteen.” Peavey shifted his ramrod stance to rest his foot on
the bale of hides. “Fifteen bucks.”
Maggie could not believe her ears. Simon’s bid served to squash
the air from her lungs. Fifteen buckskins—equal to fi fteen silver
dollars—a ridiculous amount to spend on a supper basket.
“Fifteen, lad,” Seth cautioned. “Are ye certain?”
Renegade black braids dangled along the gold braid of his
jacket. Simon squared his shoulders and nodded. Janet took hold
of Maggie’s hand.
Seth took up the cowbell. “Fifteen bucks once . . .”
Maggie squeezed Janet’s hand, staring straight ahead.
“Fifteen twice . . .”
She fell back to lean against the wall.
“Fifteen thrice . . .”
Tom’s leather sack landed with a jangle at Seth’s feet.
“Thirty silver dollars.”
The crowd gasped, choked, and coasted into utter silence.
Tom stepped forward; sliding his rifle to rest in the crook of his
arm, he pulled the hammer to click back. “That’s ten more dol-
lars than hides in your bale, Simon.”
Peavey cast a wary glance at Tom’s half-cocked weapon and
held his hands out wide, showing empty palms open. With angry-
arrow eyes shifting from Tom to Seth, he bent to hoist the bale
onto his back, snatched up his rifl e, and stormed away.
122 Christine
Blevins
Seth clanged the cowbell with full fervor. “SOLD to Tom
Roberts!”
H
“
Hoy!
Tom! Hold up . . . yer supposed t’ be enjoyin’ the pleasure
of my company.” With skirts bunched over her arm, she struggled
to keep up, picking her way through the thick brush. “There’s no
bloody path here. If my new togs get spoilt I’ll . . .” Maggie trailed
off, at a loss to come up with anything to threaten him with.
Sliding his rifle to hang over his shoulder, Tom turned to wait.
Supper basket in his left hand, he offered Maggie his right.
“C’mon—not too far now—just up ahead.”
She slipped her hand into his, her knuckles grinding and roll-
ing in his rough grip, and Tom helped her up a steep incline
through a thick understory of mountain laurel. At the crest of the
ridge they burst through the dense bramble to witness a sky
aflame. Beneath the auburn sun tickling the horizon, the moun-
tains ranged into a silent, undulating sea of purple and blue rib-
bons as far as the eye could see.
“Megstie me!” Maggie blew out a breath. “This is quite a
sight . . .”
“A favorite spot of mine,” Tom said, pleased by her reaction.
“I call it the Stone Man Overlook—named it for that fella there.”
He pointed to a lone chunk of limestone jutting up near the edge.
Nature had hewn a pensive face into the craggy stone, complete
with hook nose and heavy brows.
Tom plunked the basket down and divested himself of hat, ri-
fle, powder horn, and pouch. He sank to sit propped against a
lichen-covered oak with long legs outstretched. “Break out the
grub. I swear I’m so hungry, my gut’s beginning to think my
throat’s cut.”
Maggie laughed. She sat opposite Tom on the thick cushion of
leaves, her legs folded and tucked to the side. She spread a square
of worn calico between them and delved into her basket.
On the cloth she centered a blackberry cobbler, its crunchy
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
123
topping sweetened with muscovado sugar. Alongside the cobbler,
she set eight pieces of fried chicken tied loose in a grease-stained
scrap of flannel. Maggie also brought out a small wheel of cheese
wrapped in fern leaves and a crock of bread-and-butter pickles,
perfect with the cornbread and bottle of rose-hip tea she’d baked
and brewed that morning.
Tom frowned, rummaging through his pouch. “Can’t seem to
lay hand to my . . . oh, never mind.” He smiled and raised his
horn spoon, triumphant. “Here ’tis.”
Supper laid out, Maggie turned back to gaze at the sinking
sun—the gloaming—her favorite time of day. The stunning vista
drove home a bittersweet awareness of just how very far she’d come.
The Blue Ridge—so vast and rich with color—quite different from
the stark crags of the Grampians, half a world away in Scotland.
“Have ye been there? Beyond those mountains?” she asked,
turning around to find Tom shoveling blackberry cobbler into his
mouth. “Och!” Maggie snatched the tin from him. “The sweet’s
for the
end
and we’re meant to
share
it.”
Tom smiled a wicked smile, arched his eyebrows, and licked
his spoon. He shifted to sit a bit closer to Maggie. “Naomi sure
bakes a fi ne cobbler.”
Annoyed he assumed—no matter rightly so—that Naomi had
provided the cobbler, Maggie resented his willingness to gobble
the whole of it without sharing a bite.
Good manners suffer bad manners.
She took a deep breath
and reminded herself—save for Tom, she would right now be
suffering Simon Peavey’s volatile heathen manners. She handed
him a piece of chicken. “Would ye care fer some tea?” she asked,
uncorking the bottle.
“No thanks.” Tom dug into his pouch and offered up a fl ask of
his own. “Seth’s finest . . .” He proceeded to wolf his supper like a
starved man, only interrupting his chewing to take gulps from his
bottle. Maggie nibbled a chicken leg in silence. The picnic was not
progressing quite as she had envisioned.
124 Christine
Blevins
“Delicious.” Tom groaned and tossed the bone from his sev-
enth piece of chicken over his shoulder. “That sure smoothed the
wrinkles from my belly. Worth every dollar.”
“The way ye galloped yer meal, I’m surprised ye tasted any of
it,” Maggie muttered. “A deadly sin that—gluttony.”
“Glutton! I’ve spent three days running news up and down the
frontier—not taking time for much more than the jerky and
johnnycakes in my pouch, and you label me a glutton?” Tom
eyed the cobbler and cast Maggie a little lad look that once most
probably melted the taut Quaker cords of his mother’s heart.
She giggled and handed him the cobbler. “Aye, g’won then,
have yer sweet.”
He scooted to sit side by side with Maggie. Holding the tin
between them, he grinned and offered her a sticky spoonful.
“You said we are meant to share it . . .” Taking turns, he fed her
a spoonful and then one to himself. As he scraped up the last of
it, Tom leaned forward, pointing with the spoon to the corner of
Maggie’s mouth. “Thee’s left a bit of berry there . . .”
Maggie caught the sweet morsel on the tip of her tongue, smil-
ing at his slip into the Quaker informal. With his handsome face
only inches from hers, Maggie held on to the smell of this man, a
heady blend of leather, sweat, wood smoke, and whiskey. She
restrained a strong urge to run a fingertip along his stubbly jaw.
“Three days on the run and ye havna shaved . . .”
“Or bathed . . .” Tom admitted with a crinkle of his nose. “I
had to hustle to get back in time to save your bacon at the auc-
tion.”
Maggie groaned. “I should have known better than let Seth
and Naomi talk me into such foolishness. Thirty dollars is an
awful lot of silver lost on my account.”
“Like Seth says”—Tom reached up and tucked a tendril of
hair back behind Maggie’s ear, slipping his hand to trail down
her neck and skim the
honey-silk skin along the crest of her
breast—“all for a good cause.”
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
125
Jolted by the intimacy of his touch, Maggie shied back like a
filly being broke to halter. She scooted sideways and began col-
lecting the remains of the picnic into her basket. “We—we ought
be gettin’ back. Naomi and Seth will worry if I’m not back
soon . . .”
“Naw, they’ve left for home.” Tom, smiling at her skittishness,
moved back to lean against the tree, bringing his bottle along for
company. “Naomi was feeling out of sorts—tired—but she didn’t
want for you to worry or miss the frolic. I told Seth never mind,
and promised I’d see you home.” He took a deep swallow and
wiped the top of the bottle on his sleeve. “Share a drink?”
Maggie skimmed a hand along her neck, retracing the warm
trail his touch had impressed on her skin. “It’s almost dark, the
frolic’s about to begin . . .”
Tom sat quiet beneath his tree. Twilight and a three- day beard
cast a dangerous shadow across his features. Eyes filled with bla-
tant yearning skimmed over Maggie’s curves. A prickly ball of
anxiety settled into the pit of her stomach, and she leaned for-
ward to quick crumple the calico into her basket, anxious to get
back to the station. She said, “Time to go, na?”
“Come sit . . .” He patted the ground with one hand and held
up the whiskey in the other. “Sit beside me and share a sip.”
Maggie hopped to her feet and stood over him. “I think I can
hear the fiddler tunin’ up . . . let’s be off, or we’ll miss the
frolic.”
Tom set the bottle aside, grabbed Maggie’s hand, and pulled
her down to land in a gasp and tumble across his lap. “Let’s have
a frolic of our own.”
Maggie forced a halfhearted giggle. “Quit this foolishness—
yer worse fer the drink . . .” She tried to stand, but he held her
tight, folded in his arms. She felt the power of his need pressing
up against her leg and knew he wasn’t about to let her go.
Tom kissed her. Pushing his tongue into her mouth, he bent
her back, his mouth pressed hard on hers. With one arm locked
126 Christine
Blevins
around her shoulders, he slid his free hand up the tangle of her
skirts, endeavoring to force a passage between her thighs. The
boning in her stays gouged painful ridges into her fl esh, and
Maggie couldn’t catch a breath, trapped beneath Tom, his every
muscle wound tight against her.
“Give us a little sugar, Maggie,” he rasped in her ear.
“My knee t’ yer bollocks is what I’ll give ye!” Bracing both
hands against his chest and shoving with all her might, she pro-
pelled herself free and scuttled away like a crab. “Brute!” Maggie
swiped the sour combination of whiskey and berry cobbler from
her lips. She jumped to her feet and swept debris from her skirt.
“I’m no Bess Hawkins to fall back and spread my legs fer yer
drunken pleasure, thirty dollars or no!”
Her hair tumbled loose over her shoulder. Crying, “Och, my
pins! I’ve lost my pins,” Maggie fell to her knees in a frantic
search through the leaves.
Tom sat there blinking, looking much like he’d woken from a
deep sleep. “Why’re you in such a swither? I meant thee no
harm . . .”
“Stiek yer whiskey-guzzling Quaker gob and help me fi nd my
pins afore it’s too dark . . . they’re silver plate and cost me a
pretty penny.”
“There’s one.” Tom crawled over and pulled a hairpin dan-
gling precariously from the end of Maggie’s waist-long curls, of-
fering it to her.
She snatched it from him and plucked up the second pin, caught
on the frayed edge of his shirt collar. “And here’s the other.” She sat
back and twisted her hair into a knot. Tom scrambled to his feet
and offered Maggie a hand up but she shrugged him off. She rose
and arranged her skirts over her arm. “Bring the basket,” she or-
dered.
Tom heaved a sigh and took up his gear and the basket. Punch-
ing a path through the bramble, he headed back to the station.
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
127
Maggie followed a few paces behind as the fi ddler’s melody wove
its way up through the trees, clear and sweet in the silence be-
tween them.
H
Sputtering pine-pitch torches jutting from the stockade illumi-
nated a stumpless patch of ground that served as the dance fl oor.
With bounce and expectation, the dancers faced one another in
two parallel lines while the three musicians huddled beneath the
blockhouse sharing a pint and a loud argument.
Phil Smillie put an abrupt end to the heated discussion and
began blowing a tune on his flute. Brian Malloy shrugged. Rest-
ing his bodhran on his knee, he drew a heartbeat from the goat-
skin tacked taut to a circlet of birch with a stick that looked like
a double-ended spoon. After a few mea