Midwife of the Blue Ridge (18 page)

“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

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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