A Flight of Arrows (11 page)

Two Hawks flicked a glance at the doorway. “Maybe not just with him.”

Anna's bubble of peace burst, leaving her with a dizzying, sinking feeling. She closed her eyes, trying to order her thoughts, but her mind swirled with exhaustion. “You're William's twin. And you're Oneida. Your people are friends to…” When she opened her eyes, Two Hawks was shaking his head, what looked like amusement tugging at his mouth. “You laugh at me? Why?”

He put a hand over her lips to silence her. “I am not laughing. I am pleased because that is your heart for me talking and I like what it says. But listen. What do you think most whites see when they look at me? An Oneida? A friend? No, the first thing they see is
Indian
. Even with these clothes that is what they see. And they are afraid or angry. Bear's Heart, this is a thing we will face for the rest of our days.”

For the rest of our days
. His words sent her thoughts spiraling in too many directions to grasp them all. She caught the trailing edge of the one that held her hope. “Does that mean Papa's pleased with your work? That you'll be staying?”

“He has not said, but I think so. And there is something I did not expect.”

“What is that?”

“I did not know how much
I
would like this work with wood.” He hesitated, his expression awash in a shy pride. “I am good at it.”

Was he telling her the truth or only what she wanted to hear? But Two Hawks had never done that. He was honest, even when it hurt to be.

“Mmm,” Anna replied, too happy now for words. Too tired for them. She lay her head against the settee's back and was startled when her chin jerked upright. She opened her eyes to find Two Hawks sitting quietly, watching her with a look so tender she longed for him to take her in his arms.

“Even asleep you glow like a flame,” he said. “It is good to see you happy.”

Two Hawks brushed his fingertips against her cheek, then grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. “You should go to your bed.” He drew her close, though their bodies didn't touch, and kissed her forehead gently.

“All right,” she said. “But will you come for supper this evening? I'll ask Papa too.”

“I will come if your father allows. Now go. I must work, and you sleep.”

Neither had so much as uttered Anna's name the past few hours, yet the tension in the workshop was as thick as if she stood between them. Reginald couldn't banish the sight of his daughter embracing the young man now planing a steering sweep on the other side of the half-planked bateau set up on the stocks. She'd stumbled and fallen against him, but not everyone had seen that. Nor could
he
forget the cold blade that sliced through his vitals at the looks cast at the pair on the quay.

At least the lad had possessed the sense to lead her indoors. While that had served to help Reginald distract the attention of the men to whom he'd been speaking, he was finding no comfort in the memory now. How long had it been, those moments between their vanishing into the office together and Anna emerging alone? Ten minutes? Fifteen? When she'd appeared at his side, he'd broken off a conversation to hear her happy news and supper invitation. Pride in her still suffused him, though it was tainted with suspicion. Dread. Did she know what she was doing to her reputation? Not with the midwifery, but with her patent attachment to William's brother, who looked too Indian for anyone's good.

Reginald stood back from the plank he'd been shaping, bringing that dark head into view between the curving frames of the bateau's sides. The young man's aptitude for the work had surprised Reginald. Already he was moving beyond basic carpentry skills, grasping the finer aspects of the craft with a readiness that betrayed the spark of passion Reginald had hoped to strike in William.

He is the same blood as William
.

Reginald clenched his teeth against the conviction that he'd no right to tell the lad what he should or shouldn't hope for, with Anna or anything else. He'd come to Reginald, placed himself under his authority of his own free will.
That
gave him some right, did it not? Besides, whatever else Reginald had forfeited, he was still the only father Anna had. He had every right to concern himself with her well-being. Her behavior. Her attachments.

He broke the silence. “So Anna is a midwife proper now, and we are celebrating this evening. I suppose she told you?”

The scraping ceased. Jonathan turned, regarding him through the bateau's frame. No defiance marked him—unlike Reginald's last sight of features so eerily similar.

“She was full with her joy. Creator did a wonder for her. For the mother and babe.”

“A wonder? Nothing she hasn't done with Lydia for years now.”

“She did not tell you how Heavenly Father turned the babe in the belly of that mother, when it seemed they both would die?”

Anna hadn't told him that. Granted he'd been distracted when she approached him, his attention demanded by work. Perhaps she'd meant to tell him over supper. “That's what the pair of you were doing? Speaking of such things?” Doubt laced his tone.

“I will tell Anna Catherine she must take more care in front of others.”

The unexpected words, in answer to the question he hadn't asked, lanced to the heart of what was troubling Reginald. He met the dark gaze fronting him across the bateau. There was no challenge in it. Neither was there flinching.

“Only for watching eyes?”

The lad set the sweep aside and stood. “I have made my promise to her, and to Creator, not to take what is not mine for taking. I make it now to you as well. But on that day I have your blessing, I wish to make Anna Catherine my wife.”

Reginald felt the blood leave his face. His next words ground out of him. “Is she worth it to you? Have you counted the cost?”

Two Hawks did not look away. “I have counted what we would face from the people of this place. Not all of them. But some. I have counted what I would leave behind—my place as a warrior and protector of the People. I have counted that my children will be of no clan down all the generations that come after me. These things I have counted, but still my heart is full with Anna Catherine.”

Reginald felt sick. “And has Anna made a like accounting?”

A flash in the dark eyes. If it was anger, the lad spoke with unshaken calm. “Should you accept me as her husband, still I would not take Anna Catherine as wife unless she had done this counting for herself. For us to have a life together will take much courage, for her as well as for me. This,” he made a motion of his hand at the bateau, the tools, the wood scattered about, “is the time of counting for her. And for you.”

The lad put Reginald in mind of Lydia, who often disconcerted him with her honesty. And he was right about one thing. Should Two Hawks do everything possible to live as Jonathan, a white man, he would never be accepted as such by some. Reginald had heard him called
half-breed
in the town. And worse. Fear and hatred of Indians ran deep in the valley. He once knew it himself, though he'd learned to see past it, at least in his dealings upriver with the Six Nations and those Indians who came through Schenectady to do their trading.

But this was Anna. Her life. Her heart. Was she prepared to live with the costs this young man envisioned?

He rounded the bateau, leaving no barrier between them. He halted a pace too close, but William's twin didn't step back.

“Enough of this,” he snapped. “There is work needing done.”

Jonathan's jaw hardened, but he nodded and made to return to his work on the sweep.

Reginald didn't think he could bear the sight of him just now. “Fetch Captain Lang for me. I need to speak with him.”

William's twin brushed at the wood shavings on his borrowed shirt and went to do Reginald's bidding, leaving him smarting at his own craven longing for the impossible. That it could be William working beside him, never knowing what manner of man he called
father
. He wished he'd never agreed to Stone Thrower's demand of sharing the burden of finding William. The lad's defection was a constant, condemning lash across his heart.

Reginald went back to setting planks for a time before realizing his apprentice hadn't returned from the quay. He'd made up his mind to go in search of Lang himself when he heard the office door bang open and the captain's voice shouting down the passage.

“Major, you had better get out here!”

G
roggy from her nap, Anna halted in surprise at the pantry alcove at the back of the kitchen. Occupying half the space was an astonishing sight—a bathing tub, wood framed and copper lined. Occupying the tub, submerged to her neck, was Lydia, head lolling back against the tub's curved head.

“Lydia? Where on earth did
that
come from?”

Cheeks flushed a rosy shade, Lydia peered through the steam rising from the water's placid surface. “This, my girl, is all your doing.”

“What do you mean
my
doing?”

Though her hair was pinned high, steam had curled tendrils about Lydia's face, making her look nearer Anna's age than a woman in her early thirties. “A certain Mr. Kennedy insisted on showing his gratitude for the life of his newest daughter
and
his wife by passing along this glorious contraption. I suppose I should have let you try it first, but you slept through its delivery and I hadn't the heart to wake you.” Grinning impishly she added, “So I told myself.”

Water sloshed as Lydia made to rise. Anna snatched up a waiting towel and held it wide, doubling as a curtain.

“I suppose we'll need to hang a drape.” Lydia wrapped herself as she exited the tub.

Anna busied herself scanning pantry shelves, debating what to fix for supper. When she turned, Lydia had donned a wrapper. “Perhaps a rug would be a welcome addition,” she said, as Lydia's feet did a little dance on the chilly stones.

“That's the spirit.” Still damp around the edges and warm from the bath, Lydia reached to embrace Anna. “Congratulations—and thank you for this,” she added, with a rap of knuckles on the tub's edge. “Though it did take a prodigious lot of hauling and heating water to fill it.”

“Then it shan't be a daily affair,” Anna said.

“Lovely for a treat, though. If you'd like, I'll see to supper while you—” A banging on the front door silenced Lydia, who gestured at the shift, stays, and petticoat draped over the bench, brows arching in half-apologetic amusement.

“I'll see who it is.” Anna hurried through the house to the front door, which banged open as she reached it, causing her to leap back in surprise, even as she saw that it was Papa and Captain Lang, supporting a sagging figure between them. A man, dark haired and lean, drenched and reeking of mud as though he'd been in the river. His head drooped, presenting her only its sodden, muddy crown.

Papa's voice was strained. “Where is Lydia?”

“I…She…Bring him in, Papa. Who is it? What happened?”

Rousing to her voice, the man Papa and Captain Lang supported lifted his head, showing her a face so bruised and swollen, it took her a span of clutching heartbeats to recognize Two Hawks.

A fire warmed the room at the foot of the stairs where years ago Reginald Aubrey had convalesced in the McClarens' spare bed. In that bed Two Hawks now lay, drifting in and out of awareness. Anna occupied a chair at his bedside, clearly with no intention of budging from the spot should the rest of Schenectady come pounding on the door in need.

With a basin to empty, Lydia left the door ajar and stepped into the passage. She found Reginald sitting alone in the kitchen. Lydia set the basin with its red-stained contents on the table. “He's patched as well as
can be,” she said in answer to Reginald's querying look. “Anna's with him. Now—what on earth happened to your apprentice?”

Reginald winced at her words. “That is a story only he can tell.”

“Obviously someone—several someones—gave him a thrashing and tossed him into the river like a sack of kittens. What I want to know is
why
?”

Lydia was nearly as angry as Anna had been since her first sight of Two Hawks being dragged, battered and dripping, into the house. With lips clenched and bloodless, Anna had ministered to her beloved's abused flesh, jealous for the task of stripping off the sopping clothes, washing away the blood and mud, while Lydia had assessed his injuries.

His beautiful face
. Though a shocking sight presently, Lydia had assured Anna he'd probably heal without disfigurement. There were no deep lacerations. No broken teeth or facial bones. Perhaps a cracked rib beneath the welter of bruising on his torso. Fists had done the work, not weapons, except for the nasty scalp wound that had required stitches to close.

Now she'd time to think beyond the immediate crisis, the implication of that wound sent a chill down Lydia's spine. “Did someone mean to
scalp
him?”

“No. Surely…” Reginald rubbed a hand over his face. “Honestly, Lydia, I don't know. We'd had words over Anna, see, and I wanted him out of my sight. I sent him to the quay to fetch Ephraim. He was overlong at it. I was about to go looking when Ephraim came shouting for me. He'd found Jonathan lying half in the Binne Kill—beaten as you've seen. And that is all I know.”

Reginald shuddered; despite his words there
was
more. Lydia sat across from him, the languor of that glorious bath long vanished.

“What is it?”

“Something happened on the quay outside my office. Anna came to us after that birthing this morn. She called him by his Oneida name, in front of listening ears.”

“Well? 'Tis no secret he's Oneida.”

“Let me finish,” Reginald said. “She called to him and then…it seemed she stumbled, tripped I suppose, but she landed square in his arms—with all the quayside looking on. If only she had taken more care.”

Lydia felt a sinking of heart, a stirring of unease. “She loves him, Reginald. She wanted to share her happiness. And no doubt she was exhausted. It was an accident.”

Reginald's fists clenched on the table. “Accident or no, it will not do. Can you not see? She is blind to the shade of his skin, but I cannot be. Not when there are those around us who will never be so blind.”

Lydia pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples, hating this.

“The lad had the sense to put her from him,” Reginald went on. “Or perhaps it was Anna's doing. 'Twas over in an instant, and I hoped nothing would come of it. But what else could have provoked such an attack? The lad has kept to himself, done his work, made no enemies in this—”

Reginald's gaze shot past Lydia, sharpening before Anna's voice cut in, as hard and cold as Lydia had ever heard it.

“They weren't
his
enemies, Papa. They were yours!”

Turning to see her—tall and slender in the doorway, hair mussed, face white and set—Lydia rose to her feet, placing herself between the two. “Reginald's enemies? What do you mean?”

“I mean that what happened to Two Hawks had nothing to do with us. He's told me.” Anna didn't take her gaze from Reginald, an accusing look Lydia knew must be breaking his heart. It was breaking hers. “He went as you sent him, Papa, to fetch Captain Lang. As he was passing your bateau on the stocks outside, he heard noises. He found three men setting fire to your boats. More Tory sympathizers, no doubt, trying to stop you building bateaux for the Continentals. Two Hawks stopped the fire's catching, but instead of fleeing, they caught him—and beat him!” Tears flowed, choking her voice. “Why did no one stop them? Didn't anyone see?”

Reginald was on his feet, expression pained. “Someone may have seen.”

“And gave no aid? Why?”

Reginald took a step toward his daughter and stopped. Lydia hadn't seen such vulnerability on his face since the summer past, when he knelt before Stone Thrower in a clearing at sunset, expecting to die. “You know full well it is because he is an Indian.”

Anna's nostrils flared. “He's William's
twin
. Hasn't anyone eyes to see that? They'd never have done such a thing to William.”

“They thought William my son. There is no knowing what would happen now the truth—”

“Then never mind William. If you would just accept Jonathan, accept
us
, others would follow your lead. Your resentment is making it harder.
You
make it harder.”

Reginald's mouth firmed. “No one said this arrangement would be easy, or safe. Anna, look you…” He started toward her again, but her rigid stance held him off.

Reginald
, Lydia silently pleaded,
tell her what she needs to hear. Even if you cannot promise to soften your heart, at least be sorry for it
.

Reginald stood there unbending, inscrutable, and so Lydia did what was probably the worst thing she could have done—blindly wielded the scalpel of her own words, hoping nothing vital would be nicked. “Anna, 'tis more complicated than that. That's what your father is trying to say. Choosing Two Hawks, marrying him…It won't be an easy path for either of you.”

Anna turned wounded eyes to her. Her slender throat convulsed as she raised her chin. “I wanted to tell you both what happened. I'm going back to him now.”

She pivoted on her heel and left them without another word.

Reginald didn't go after her.

Lydia hugged her arms to her chest, as if to hold together the pieces
breaking inside her. Disappointment wrapped her tighter—disappointment in Anna, in Reginald, in the whole of mankind. Most of all in herself. How often in the past had she found a path through tangled hurts with her words? Blunt, honest, brave words. They had deserted her.

Reginald stood there in his misery, cut off from his daughter, from her. As he'd always been in the deep places of his heart. She'd never seen that as clearly as she did now.

“Reginald, there will be no supper tonight, and it will be some days before your apprentice can resume work. I suggest you go back to the shop or home. Leave us—him—to heal.”