He and Keturah made a striking sight. Did he sense Keturah’s fondness for him? Note the way her eyes followed him? Even now as he pushed back from the table and moved to his desk, she watched him from beneath her lashes.
The significance of it made Tessa’s stomach clench. Was Keturah sweet on the colonel? Well, why wouldn’t she be? He was striking as the day was long with his mismatched eyes. He spoke the Indian tongue, had even rescued her from Fort Pitt. All the makings of a hero, a fairy tale. Though he’d spoken against marrying, Keturah seemed to suit somehow.
“There you are.” Ma hovered in the doorway, smiling approvingly at Keturah’s breakfasting and Tessa’s tidying up. “Both my girls.”
“Morning, Mistress Swan,” Clay said as he inked a quill.
“Fine day to you, sir,” she returned. Behind her appeared Ross, who squeezed past his mother and approached the colonel’s onerous desk.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Hat in hand, Ross eyed the commander with a dash of awe.
Clay signed a document and set aside his quill before turning toward the youngest Swan. “I hear you’re quite a hand with a rifle.”
“Fixing and firing them, aye, sir,” Ross replied with a marked flush.
“Can we count on you for the militia muster?”
“Aye, sir.” Ross turned banty rooster before Tessa’s scrutiny. “And more besides.”
Hiding a chuckle, Tessa moved her mother’s way. “Ready, Ma?”
“If the colonel gives us leave to go,” she replied.
“The latest scouting party should return by dusk.” Clay stood, an ink stain on his sleeve. “I’d advise delaying your leaving till we’ve heard their report.”
“Might behoove us,” Ma answered. “I’m sure Hester won’t mind.”
Tessa went outside, breathing deeply of the fresh air. Passing from blockhouse to common, she squinted at the brightness. The damp of the night before had given way to the bloom of day. Heat shimmers would soon skew her view as the day soared to summery heights. Her gaze trailed to Hester puffing on her clay pipe on the cabin’s stone stoop. The pungent smoke held still in the windless air.
“And how,” Hester queried between smokes, “did the colonel like his breakfast?”
“He made no complaint.”
“A mite crowded in there with Keturah.”
“Nay, Auntie. The blockhouse is room enough for the entire militia.” Sensing what would come next, Tessa added, “I’ll not make his noon meal, mind you.”
A sharp cackle. Oddly, Hester seemed satisfied. “No matter. Plenty of meat left from last night. You might fetch some fresh water. This heat turned yesterday’s brackish.”
Taking two pails near the woodpile, Tessa headed toward the far end of the fort, glad for the welcoming shade of the lone elm by the spring. A few women made small talk as they drew water, children wending between their skirts. A peaceful morn after a frolicsome, abruptly ended night.
For a moment she stood, eyes closed, and savored the morning. Maybe in time, when no more bullet lead or arrows flew, these forbidding pickets would be taken down and used to build a dwelling fit for a family.
“Well, if it ain’t Miss Swan.”
The warm voice turned her around. “Morning, Maddie. Just call me Tessa, aye?”
Maddie smiled, brows raised. “Where’d you disappear to last night? All that dancin’ wear you out?”
“I went to hunt for a book.” Tessa set the water pails down. “Betimes I’d rather read.”
“Who learned you?”
“Keturah’s ma.” In the blur of years she’d almost forgotten.
“Next time you go nosin’ around, try the west blockhouse. Clay has a whole saddlebag of books.”
“Army manuals and such?”
“History books mostly. Poems and novels. From Philly-delphia.”
“Is he jealous of them?”
“Jealous? Meanin’ he won’t share ’em?” Maddie gave a decisive shake of her head. “Clay’s many things, but tightfisted he ain’t.”
High praise. Maddie, she was coming to realize, never said a sorry word about anyone. A rare trait in the fort’s close confines. But might she be in league with Hester, wanting to do a little matchmaking through book borrowing? The fanciful thought was quickly cast aside. Maddie knew better than to foist a woman on Clayton Tygart.
“You two seem on friendly terms. Maybe you could borrow a book for me.” Could Maddie read? Most could only mark an X for their name, her brothers included. “I’m the only Swan who can read and write save Hester.”
“You, Hester, and Clay are the only learned folk I know hereabouts. Oh, and that storekeeper, Mister Cutright.”
Maddie’s admiration gave Tessa a quiet pride. “Where’d Colonel Tygart get his learning?”
“At the Friends School in Philly-delphia.”
Plain folk. She’d almost forgotten. “Quakers?”
A solemn nod. “Clay don’t talk much about it. Was took by Indians before that. Once his kin got him back, he was wild as an unbroke horse, and only the Friends could tame him.”
Another missing piece of the colonel’s history fell into place. All that learning made a fine gloss, yet she still sensed an unbowed beat of wildness beneath his cool courtesy.
“I suppose the Friends did themselves proud.” Tessa bit her lip to stem further praise and began drawing water. Balancing the full-to-the-brim buckets, she bade Maddie good day. “Best hasten back. Come by Hester’s and have some flip with us tonight. We shan’t leave out till morning.”
“All right.” Maddie unwound the yellow handkerchief from about her neck, wet it in the spring, and wrung out the cloth before donning it again.
Tessa set down her buckets and lifted her apron to dab at the sweat beading her own upper lip. Near the front gates, Lemuel sat atop his favored white-stockinged bay horse. Was he going home? She watched him depart with a check in her spirit, yet Lem’s heart for the land was always greater than his fear of Indians. Two days away from the fields meant twice the work on his return.
“Hotter than Hades,” he called to them at the last, lifting his hat in farewell as the gates swung open. “I misdoubt even the Indians are about in this heat.”
Ma’s mouth formed a solemn, wordless line as she watched her beloved son ride away. And Tessa wondered, did Ma quietly frame him in her head and heart in case it might be her last sight of him alive?
They returned to their simple tasks within fort walls, the same stroke of uncertainty beneath all they did. Hester read aloud from an old Virginia Gazette as if to distract them from their cares.
“Well, wonders never cease.” She raised her monocle and peered at the paper. “Just listen to this. ‘A newly invented instrument for knitted, knotted, double-looped work, to make stockings, breeches pieces, or silk gloves, cotton or worsted.’”
“A knitting-machine frame?” Ma shook her head. “I’ll take my two hands, thank you.”
Tessa’s own knitting needles flew, her face turned to the window to catch a cooling breeze. To rest her eyes, she sometimes paused and looked out the window. The fort’s activity was never dull, its commander never idle.