Choices of the Heart (23 page)

“I want to sit down,” she said when the movement of the dance brought their hands together again.

“You can’t. It’s the middle of the set. You’ll ruin it for everyone.”

And so she would, so she continued, avoiding his gaze, looking for Liza or Griff and a way to leave.

But no one was leaving. In between dances, to give everyone a rest, the assembly paused to sing ballads, some old, some Esther knew, some local. One young man with sunset-red hair that made Esther’s eyes narrow stood up and began to recite a poem about two families in strife. The rhyme and meter were imperfect, but Esther’s fingers itched for a pencil to write down the words, preserve them in the event the strife of the families exploded into full violence once again. Without writing implements at hand, she leaned forward to ensure she caught every word in an attempt to commit them to memory.

When the dancing recommenced, Zach appeared before her again and held out his hands. “You promised me another dance.”

“I did?” She didn’t recall doing so. On the contrary, she was quite certain she had said no such thing.

So why would he lie?

She couldn’t get out of going onto the dancing area with him. It would have made a scene, which she didn’t want.

He behaved himself this time, though, introducing her to several of his cousins. She danced with a few of them too. The night grew dark. More mothers took the younger children home. Old people either departed or nodded on benches and quilts. And the music continued to play. Esther continued to accept invitations, more and more of them from Zach, as many of the men went home, no doubt, as work recommenced the next day. Some returned, their faces flushed. She suspected why. When one approached her in the movement of a dance, she caught a hint of spirits and understood—someone was serving liquor in the woods. She braced herself for trouble.

None came. The music slowed. The dances grew more focused on couples staying together throughout the piece, and Esther found herself with Zach for the fifth, perhaps sixth, time.

“I’d rather not,” she began.

But he gripped her hands and drew her onto the trampled flat grass and slipped his arm around her waist. It was a waltz, but he held her closer than the dance required, closer than she liked.

“Let me go, Zach,” she said in a quiet voice.

She tried to pull free but couldn’t draw too much attention to herself. She’d done enough of that already tonight. All the couples seemed to be dancing that close, including Liza with a young man who bore the golden hair of the Brookses. And there was Griff at last, his arm around Maimy’s waist. She laughed up at him, and his smile for her held pure affection.

Esther’s middle twisted. He hadn’t come near her, hadn’t once offered to dance with her, but appeared to waltz with his cousin several times removed.

Not that Esther cared with whom he danced. If he didn’t want to dance with her, he was free not to. But her teeth hurt from clenching them, so she tried to turn her attention back to Zach.

The figure of the dance brought her line of sight to Griff. Across the clearing, their gazes met, held, until they had to turn away, and Esther missed a step, treading on Zach’s toes.

“So sorry,” she murmured.

She wasn’t. She didn’t care at that moment. She needed to sit down, get away, do something to clear her head of the notion that she was jealous of Griff choosing to dance with pretty Maimy Tolliver over Esther Cherrett, who had always had more dance partners than any girl needed.

“I need to stop,” she said aloud.

“When this dance is over.” Zach drew her closer.

She stiffened her spine, grateful for her corset for once in her life.

“Did I tell you how beautiful you are today?” he murmured too close to her ear.

His breath fanned tendrils of hair away from her cheek, and she jerked her head back. “No, and I’d rather you didn’t.”

“But it’s the truth.” They turned and spun through the other dancers, along the edge of the clearing.

“Zach,” Esther said through her teeth, “take me to one of the benches. I’m weary of dancing.”

“We can’t stop in the middle.” One more turn, and he had them beneath the spreading branches of a sycamore tree. “We can stop here.”

They ceased dancing, but Zach kept his arm around her. Once again, Esther’s gaze tracked Griff around the clearing until the figure of the dance turned him to face her. She caught his eye, then glanced up at Zach and smiled. “Thank you. I’m growing weary.”

“I can walk you home.”

“I must wait for Liza.”

“Griff’s here.” Zach raised his hand from her corset-protected waist to her unprotected shoulder. His thumb caressed her ear.

She slapped it away. “Stop that.”

He did and turned to face her. “I’d like to court you, Esther. You are just the sort of girl—”

“I’m twenty-four, not a girl, quite too old for marriage around here.” She tried to sound like she did in the schoolroom.

He simply smiled and brushed a stray curl off of her cheek. “That’s not too old for me. There’s no one better here.”

“There’s Maimy Tolliver. She’s young and very pretty.”

And looking up at Griff as though he were Prince Charming from a fairy tale. He bent toward her to catch something she said, then straightened and looked directly at Esther.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she crossed her arms. “Please, Zach, enough of this talk. I’m your friend, nothing more.”

“I’d like it to be more.” He cupped his hand beneath her chin.

“If you try to kiss me,” she said through stiff lips, “I—I’ll—”

She remembered Griff tilting her chin up that way, how she thought he might kiss her, how she feared it and then was disappointed when he simply walked away.

Oh no, no, no, she couldn’t want Griff Tolliver to kiss her. That was wrong. So terribly wrong. So terribly—

“I’ve never met such a perfect, lovely . . .” Zach leaned forward. He was going to kiss her.

“Stop.” Esther stumbled backward.

“Esther, don’t run off.” Zach reached for her again.

She took another step back. “I’m not anything like perfect. I—I’m . . . just not. And if you persist, I—I won’t be able to see you at all.”

“But you spend more time with me than anyone. Your eyes. Your smiles.” He curled his hand around her arm.

Another hand grasped his wrist. “The lady said no,” Griff said. “Now let her go.”

Zach glared at his cousin. “Don’t interfere.”

“She’s under the protection of my family. Of course I’m going to interfere if she looks upset. Now let go.” Griff must have squeezed Zach’s wrist, for his face pinched with pain and he released Esther.

She flashed Griff a grateful smile. “I shouldn’t have danced with him so many times.”

Though the fiddling continued, the dancing had ceased. The crowd circled around, gaping, listening.

Griff gave her an indulgent smile in return. “Playing the flirt can get a girl into trouble.”

“I wasn’t . . . I don’t . . .” She gave Griff a wide-eyed stare. “Or perhaps I was a little. It happens in the dancing, you know.”

“Yea, I know. It’s why I didn’t ask you.”

The music ground to a halt, and in the eerie stillness Zach spat out, “Him? You prefer him?” He turned on his cousin. “You promised. You said you wouldn’t court her.”

“I haven’t,” Griff said at the same time Esther exclaimed, “He hasn’t.”

Except perhaps in those dulcimer lessons, with him right beside her, his hands curled around hers, the air crackling between them.

“It’s nothing,” she insisted to herself as much as to Zach. “Truly, Zach.”

He didn’t seem to hear as he glared at his cousin. “So maybe Pa is right and Tollivers can’t be trusted to keep their word.”

“No, don’t say things like this because of me!” Esther cried.

She clutched at the folds of her skirt. She glanced right and left, taking in the faces—curious, accusing, angry, everything but sympathetic. She was a stranger, a female who had come into this isolated community and apparently had taken the most eligible bachelor on the ridge. No one would listen to her explanation. No one would accept her protest as the truth. One choice faced her, the choice that had brought her there.

She spun on the low heel of her dancing slipper and ran.

19

Esther plunged into the trees, into the darkness, away from the crowd, all staring eyes and moving lips. All the angry notes she’d received in Seabourne raced before her mind’s eye even as her real eyes probed the blackness for a path, a clearing, a place to hide. The notes turned to faces, the words rang in her ears.

Bad woman.
Scarlet woman. Go away.

She paused in a thicket and clamped her hands over her ears. “I’m . . . none of those . . . things. I’m . . . not.” Her protest emerged in panting gasps.

Yet perhaps she protested too much. Always in her heart ran the relentless fear that she was all of those things. She had been too friendly with Zach, teaching him to read, sitting beside him on the bench instead of across from him. Just because his nearness made her feel nothing didn’t mean hers didn’t affect him.

And at the same time, she flinched from Griff’s touch because she liked it too much, met his gaze with hers and thought about meeting his lips with hers. Wanton, sinful thoughts, unacceptable behavior to have danced with Zach once, let alone half a dozen times, when she had Hannah’s warning. He would make assumptions about her intentions, and rightly so. She had made the same mistake again, not considered the other person in her own pursuit of pleasure.

“I didn’t know how to say no politely,” she protested to the night.

But he and Griff looked to come to blows over Zach’s unwanted advances and Griff’s interference. Blows, a flaring up of the feud because of her.

She folded her arms across her middle and bent over, sick. As her breathing slowed, the night sounds of crickets, a distant owl, and the faint rustle of leaves brushed against her ears, calming and soothing.

Not knowing where the clearing lay was not calming and soothing. She had run. She presumed others had pursued. Yet the woods lent one a hundred directions, and she had taken one the others hadn’t, if they had left and not decided to let the scarlet woman lose herself in the woods, come face-to-face with one of those screaming mountain lions and—

She must go back. She must find her own way back. Downhill would surely lead to the river. The river would lead her back to the celebrants.

She started walking slowly, carefully, her hands out to protect her face from swinging branches. Thorns and twigs ripped at the lace on her gown. A ruffle caught on the limb of a fallen tree. She yanked the fabric and herself free. Her gown was hopelessly ruined. No matter. She would never want to wear it again. She had ruined Zach’s enjoyment. Perhaps Hannah was right and she had ruined Griff and Zach’s friendship.

If she did, then she would keep running. She would not be responsible for the feud starting up again, or live with the guilt and let it turn her ugly and bitter as it had Bethann.

Despite her efforts, she sounded like one of those black bears crashing through the underbrush. Twigs snapped beneath her feet. Branches cracked like rifle shots. Rustling, snuffling, gasping, she pressed on, down the hill she had fled up, pausing to listen for the rush of water.

Voices drifted to her during one of those pauses.

“Whatzat?” A man’s slurred speech rang loud and clear through a fence of trees.

Esther blinked and caught the flicker of light now, a fire in a clearing. Fires meant people. People meant someone to help her find her way back.

She lifted her foot to take a step forward.

“Probably one of those spyin’, lyin’ Brookses,” another man said. “Whatcha wanta bet?”

“Come out of the bushes,” yet one more man called. “Come into t’light where we can see ya.”

Esther didn’t move. She dared not breathe.

“We won’t hurt you iffin you didn’t hear us plotting to rid this mountain of more Brookses and Gosnolls.” The man laughed.

His companions joined him.

“Nothing important,” one of them shouted.

More laughter followed.

Esther spun on her heel and tried to creep away. Lace caught on a thorny shrub and held her fast. She grasped it with both hands and tugged in an attempt to free it and herself. The ripping of fabric. Stitching screeched like a saw on metal.

And someone grabbed her from behind.

She kicked at him. She swung her fists back to strike his arms, break his hold. She screamed and screamed as she should have screamed in January. “Let go of me! Let go of me! Let me go!”

He eluded her attempts at blows with the grace of a fencer and carried her kicking and still screaming into the clearing. “Lookee what I got here. Prettiest rabbit I ever snared.”

“And the loudest.” One of the men rose and clamped his hand across her mouth.

She tried to bite him. Her teeth wouldn’t sink far enough into his calloused palm to hurt him. He simply chuckled and stayed where he was, too close, close enough for her to smell his sweat and whiskey breath.

“Which one of us gets to skin the rabbit?” he asked.

“I catched her,” her captor said.

“Yea, but iffin you let go, she’ll run. I think I should.” The man with his hand across her mouth raised his other hand and hooked his fingers into the modest neckline of her dress.

Esther’s stomach rebelled. She swallowed, tensed, made her whole body go still. She couldn’t stop them at that moment. If she seemed to comply, perhaps they would lower their guard.

“I like to skin them right down the middle.” The man gave her gown a tug. “Yessir, right down the front to get to—”

The click sounded like a slamming door in the night. The three men froze except for their heads snapping around to the other side of the clearing.

“Let her go, Jake and Jeb Tolliver,” Griff said, stepping into the clearing. “I’ve got two barrels with this scattergun and won’t hesitate to use both of them.”

No one ever looked as good as did Griff Tolliver at that moment. Her knees weakened. If Jake and Jeb let her go, she would fall flat on her face and probably hug Griff’s calves, or feet, or whatever she could reach.