The Barefoot Bride (35 page)

Wesley picked up his spoon and pointed it at her. "It's acceptable to blow on hot soup, but not to spray it out of the bowl."

"Well excuse me fer a-bein' so dang dumb," she responded, her voice deceptively sweet. "I reckon I'm so dumb, I couldn't pour piss from a boot withouten directions. But I don't keer fer this soup no how."

Despite his dismay at her colorful language, Saxon smiled into his napkin. No one in the world could match Chickadee's eloquent way with words. But still, he couldn't let things get
too
out of hand. He remained ready to intervene.

"It would be a breach of manners not to at least eat a portion of it," Wesley informed Chickadee insolently.

She stood, her rage visible. Saxon took her arm, part of him wishing he could let her do whatever it was she planned for Wesley, and the other part of him knowing it would do her more harm than Wesley.

She yanked her arm from his grasp. "I don't like this soup, Wesley Weasel, but since it 'pears yore so God-burn worried that it ain't gwine git et, eat it fer me!"

Saxon reached for her bowl, Wesley ducked, but neither of them was fast enough. The bowl glanced off Wesley's forehead, spilling soup, thick and hot, down his face and onto his immaculate cambric shirt. He'd barely wiped the liquid from his eyes when a roll, generously buttered, came flying through the air and bounced off the end of his nose.

"You wanted to know how mountain folks eat soup, Wesley? Well, they eat it same as you-uns lessen they insist on agger-pervokin' somebody whilst thur a-eatin'. Iffen they do that? Well, then they don't eat the soup—they
wear
it!"

She stepped away from the table and saw Saxon staring at her. She sent him a silent apology before she whirled and left the room, her gait proud and regal.

Saxon watched her until she'd disappeared and then turned back to the group of people in the dining room.

Wesley stood. "I demand an apology for—"

"Shut up, Wesley."

"Yeah, shut up, Wesley," Max repeated, grinning broadly. He suspected what Saxon was about to do and he would not stop his friend this time. Wesley had gone much too far, and Max understood Saxon's need to defend Chickadee's honor.

Araminta rose and pointed her cane at Saxon. "Saxon—"

"I suggest you and everyone else continue with the meal, Grandmother. Wesley and I need to...
discuss
a few things in private. Wesley, please give me the honor of your company in the library."

Wesley blanched. "I will give you no such honor. You—"

"What's the matter, Wesley?" Max asked. "Are you afraid to go have a talk with Sax?"

Wesley looked around. Everyone was staring at him. "Well... no. I'm not afraid. But I refuse to—"

"Now, Wesley!" Saxon slammed his hand on the table, rattling the silverware and upsetting glasses.

Wesley had no choice but to follow Saxon out of the dining room. As he trailed behind, noting Saxon's angry stride and balled fists, he tried to rationalize the situation. Surely Saxon wouldn't go through with this. They were all civilized people! The elite of the city! The privileged class didn't resort to fistfights. It was all a bluff!

By the time they reached the library, his hypothesis had bolstered him, and his courage had trickled back. It returned full force when he saw Charles, Oliver, Nate, and Kyle enter the room and come to stand behind him. "Well now, Sax," he taunted anew. "Can you handle yourself without your bodyguard? Perhaps she
larnt
you some of her mountain moves?"

Saxon grabbed him by the collar.

"Think he'll do it, fellows?" Wesley asked confidently, still sure Saxon would not demean himself by brawling like a common dockman.

Saxon's fist ached with the need to punch Wesley's nose. But Wesley, though tall, was not a well-built man. He was no match for Saxon, and Saxon had never fought a man who stood no chance of winning. Slowly, reluctantly, he uncurled his fist. "I'm going to give you one chance to apologize for bullying Keely, Wesley. You will apologize to me, and then you will ask forgiveness from her."

"Listen to him, friends." Wesley jeered. "Without his mountain whore defending him, he doesn't know what to do!"

Molten fury erupted inside Saxon, burning from his mind every thought of restraint, every consideration he'd had for Wesley's physical inadequacies. The only thing he could think of was his uncontrollable, savage desire to champion the girl whose name had been so viciously slandered.

The power in his fist was backed by every shred of his hatred for Wesley, every fiber of his strength, every splinter of his anger, and every wondrous wave of love that crashed through him at the thought of his redheaded mountain girl.

The sickening crack that followed told all that Wesley's jaw was broken.

"My God, Saxon!" Nate shouted, helping Wesley to his feet. "You broke his—"

"I don't give a damn what I broke! Get him out of my house before I break every bone—"

"Now see here, Sax!" Oliver took Saxon's arm. "Wesley needs medical attention!"

Saxon yanked his arm away from the man he'd once considered a friend. "Wesley, you bastard, keep her name out of your mouth. Because if you dare to sully it again, it won't be medical attention you need, it'll be a coffin! If I ever hear
any
of you talk about her—if you so much as
think
about her in the wrong way, I'll make sure it's the last thought any of you ever have!"

Saxon stalked out then, but his warning, like a black cloud, hung heavily over the room.

Chapter 19

Shane took great care to keep his huge form hidden behind the bushes. "Smooth," he whispered as he sipped at the liquor. "Aye, 'tis just right, Chickadee." He handed her the flask and grinned, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight that lit the North End.

Chickadee took a sip. "It ain't as good as George Franklin's but it dranks all right, I reckon. 'Pears to me you boys can start a-sellin' now."

Gallagher's eyes caressed the contraption Chickadee had constructed several weeks ago. It had taken him, Shane, and Killian a while to find all the parts she'd described to them: copper cooker, cap, slop arm, plug stick, rags, copper worm, barrel, and water pipe. But they'd found them and watched as she built the rig. Relying on memory, she made a replica of the stills she'd seen George Franklin make many a time.

And then she set about remembering the recipe for his whiskey. "We're gwine use whole grain white corn, put it in this here barrel, and cover it with warm water," she'd explained to the three amazed Irishmen. "We'll leave it set fer a day and a night. Then we'll put it in that thar sproutin' tub on account o' it's got a sieve in the bottom fer a-drainin'. We'll keep on a-pourin' warm water inter it, and put a hot cloth over it till all the water's done drained out. In about three days, them corn kernels is gwine be sprouted. We'll dry 'em with heat and grind 'em inter corn grits. Then we'll put them grits inter a barrel with hot water and let the whole mess git real ripe afore we thin outen the mash with more warm water and add rye malt and sugar to it. After a few days, we'll stir the mash real good and let it work fer two or three days more. Then we'll run it through the still."

The Irishmen's astonishment grew when she did exactly what she'd explained she would. The first runoff, what Chickadee called singlings, had been a dingy, poisonous fluid. So she made a second run of doublings, this one at a lower temperature, and had produced a clear, two-hundred-proof liquid.

Now, as the foursome sat and sipped the homemade liquor, they all knew the whiskey would bring a good price.

"I'm nae knowin' how to thank ye, Chickadee," Killian said. "Ye've given us a trade, lass, aye, that ye have. We'll be keepin' our jobs on the docks, but 'tis thanks to ye we'll be able to make money on the side now."

Gallager nodded. "I've spoken to several people, and 'twas anxious they were to buy from us. 'Tisn't a whiskey sold in the bars that can outdo this ye've made fer us."

"How can we ever repay yer kindness?" Shane asked.

Chickadee gazed warmly at the three men. "You-uns heped me git back to Khan that night. We're even now."

The four friends sat in the splash of moonlight for a while longer, the Irishmen quietly reminiscing about the green homeland they'd left behind and Chickadee remembering the scene with Wesley. After she'd left the dining room she'd taken a coach and sought sanctuary here with her three Irish friends.

But the look Saxon had given her before she'd left, had followed her here. It hadn't been a furious expression, but neither had it been gentle. He masked his emotions well, but she presumed she'd broken one of those Boston rules he once tried to explain to her. Throwing soup was probably against the law here.

She just couldn't do things right no matter how hard she tried. Nothing she did was working. As if she'd ever had him, she was losing Saxon, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it. Boston, with all its fancy rules—Saxon himself, with all his ghosts—there were so many things that stood in love's way. Oh how she missed those happy times they'd shared in the Blue Ridge.

She smiled sadly at her friends. They were all kindred spirits. Each of them lost and trying to adjust to Boston; each of them knowing Boston would never be, could never come close to the wild, unspoiled beauty of their homelands.

*

Saxon was just leaving as she entered the bedroom.

"Whar you gwine at this time o' night?"

"Where am
I...
Where have
you
been? I searched the grounds everywhere, and when Josh finally told me you'd taken a coach and—"

"The North End," she said wearily, dreading an argument but knowing one was brewing.

"I told you never to go there again!" He forced her into a chair and then caught her scent. "Dammit to hell, Keely! You've been drinking again!"

"Saxon—"

"How often have you gone there?"

"Not ever' day."

He glared at the top of her head. "That's not an answer."

"Well, it's the onliest one yore a-gittin'!" She pushed him away and stood. "I love you more'n more ever' dang minute of ever' dang day, Saxon. But I ain't gwine do ever'thang you tell me to do. My friends needed hep bad. I tole you I was gwine keep on a-seein' 'em."

"Why didn't you just tell me you wanted to go? If it was that important to you, I'd have taken you there myself! I just don't want you there alone, Keely. Those bars are—"

"Ain't never been to nary a bar. I don't go thar to drank."

His eyebrow rose. "Then why do you reek of alcohol?"

She raised her nose and straightened her shoulders. "I only been
a-samplin'
likker. I ain't been a-drankin' it fer real. You got to taste it iffen you want to know iffen it's right."

His eyes widened. "You're
making
it? You and those Irishmen have been out all night—"

"I ain't been out all night! Saxon, they need money. Thur so dang poverty-poor, my heart hurts fer 'em. I larnt 'em how to make George Franklin's likker on account o' it was the onliest way I knowed how to hep 'em."

Saxon slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. "Of all the harebrained—I've a good mind to have those three Irishmen arrested for moonshining!"

"Then I'll go to jail too."

He exhaled raggedly, attempting to calm himself, because arguing with Chickadee and winning when she was in one of her famous hardheaded moods was an impossible feat.

"Saxon, I didn't do nothin' all that bad, and nobody seed us thar," she explained convincingly. "I didn't mean to stay gone fer so long, but the night's so purty and the moon's so bright. And what with the still right thar, the heat o' George Franklin's likker a-warmin' me... well, it sorter memoried me o' my holler. I reckon I tuk sick fer home tonight."

Her poignant smile and the faraway look in her sad eyes explained clearly what words could not. He turned and went to the window. How she loved those hills! Those blue-green mountains were as much a part of her as the golden freckles on her face and, in all probability, the Appalachia was calling her back to its soothing bosom.

He thought about the affairs she'd attended with Araminta and realized what an effort she'd made to make him see how much she cared for him. He knew now that she'd been scorned and insulted at each of the assemblies, and yet she'd led him to believe she was enjoying herself. She'd wanted him to be glad she was doing as he wished her to do. Dear God, he thought to himself. Her love for him had enabled her to bear all that suffering.

"What a truly remarkable emotion love is," he whispered, his breath fogging the window. Only love, the very thing he'd once believed to be pure myth, could have made him feel the way he had today at the race. He'd been irritated by the way people laughed at her, angered by the condescending way everyone looked and sneered at her. The whispered insults he'd heard had infuriated him, and Wesley's slander had finally hurled him into a rage.

The savage need to defend her was the most uncontrollable emotion he'd ever experienced. And only one thing could have possibly caused such a violent need.