Serpents in the Garden (The Graham Saga) Page 5

  In reply, Alex pointed to where Angus was standing to the side, almost invisible in his immobility.

  “Ah.” Ian gave Angus a nod. The tall young man mumbled a greeting, but remained where he was, cradling the loaded musket.

  “It’s like having your own private ghost,” Alex said in an undertone. “And I’m not quite sure how much good he would be should it come to the crunch.”

  “Wee Angus is a good shot,” Ian replied, just as low. “He’ll see you safe.”

  “Yeah, because otherwise Matthew will use his guts for garters.” She gave Ian a little wave and set off at a brisk pace, Angus trotting after.

  By the time Alex reached the turnoff to Forest Spring, she had almost forgotten that she had Angus with her. Walking several yards behind her, he moved like a wind through the shrubs that bordered the bridle path. Alex concentrated on her surroundings rather than on her elusive bodyguard, noting that yet another part of the forest had been cleared and fenced, in preparation for more cows.

  Just as Alex emerged from the path, she saw Patrick appear in the dairy doorway and hurry off in the direction of the fields. Alex made a face at his disappearing back. She was going to be very glad when Patrick’s term of bondage was up next year, hoping he’d leave as soon as possible. Capable and quiet, but with dark eyes that saw and noted everything, he gave her the creeps. Also, unlike Angus, it was evident Patrick resented his servant status, and at times she’d catch him looking at her elder sons – in particular Ian – with a cold gleam to his eyes and a sneer on his lips.

  Forest Spring was built on a much smaller scale than Graham’s Garden. The main house was a weathered cabin, the heavy logs having aged into a silvered brown. There was a small stable and a separate dairy situated beside the spring that gave the small homestead its name. A cat was lying on the door stoop, a couple of hens were scratching at the ground, and Jenny was nowhere to be seen.

  Alex found her in the dairy, her back to the door as she packed the diced cheese curd into the wooden pans. When Alex called her name, Jenny jumped, wheeling round so fast she almost dropped the pan she was holding. Hmm… Alex pursed her mouth at Jenny’s bright red face.

  “Mother Alex!” Jenny’s shoulders slumped. “What a surprise! I didn’t hear you, and to suddenly have someone calling my name like that, it unnerved me. For a moment there, you even sounded like my mother.”

  Alex seriously doubted that. Elizabeth Leslie had spoken with a nasal tone to her voice, far from any noise Alex ever produced. Still, she made a vague confirming sound, and followed Jenny into the main house. Something wasn’t right.

  Alex studied her daughter-in-law while she bustled about the kitchen. Jenny’s generally impeccable exterior looked unravelled, and whenever Alex met her eyes, the younger woman ducked her head to hide cheeks that went an uncharacteristic shade of pink.

  Had it been one of her own children, or even Naomi, Alex would simply have asked and waited until she got an answer, but her and Jenny’s relationship had never reached that element of familiarity, to a large extent due to Jenny’s mother, who even after death cast a substantial shadow over her most beloved daughter. Alex accepted the offered mug of barley water, smiling when she recognised her own recipe with plenty of ginger and cinnamon.

  “I miss you,” she said, seeing a pleased smile appear on Jenny’s face.

  “You do?” Jenny sat down opposite to her.

  “Yes, you never come over anymore, do you?”

  Jenny looked away and muttered something about being very busy with the last of the summer milk.

  Alex drank some more barley water. “Your mother wouldn’t approve.” She was taken aback by the dark flush that flew up Jenny’s face. A warning bell rang in Alex’s head.

  “Approve?” Jenny asked in a flat voice.

  “Of you spending so much time alone.” Alex noted how the tensed back relaxed somewhat, but decided not to push things – at least, not for now. She sighed. Both Jenny and Ian were hurting, and she had no idea how to help. “You don’t spend time with us, and you don’t ride over to see your brother and father. All the time you spend up here, with the occasional visit from Agnes or Naomi.”

  Jenny’s light blue eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to see my father!”

  “No, I suppose that might be difficult.”

  “Eight months dead she was when he informed me he was marrying again.” Two bright red spots appeared on Jenny’s cheeks. “The woman he’d been married to for more than thirty years, and she’s barely cold in her grave before he goes a-courting again!”

  “Maybe he was lonely,” Alex tried, although she totally agreed with Jenny.

  “Lonely? Then he could have wed a widow, someone closer to his age, not that…that…”

  “Girl?” Alex offered.

  Jenny bit her lip and nodded.

  “It isn’t her fault. I dare say your father, for all his stellar qualities, did not come top of her wish list – he’s older than her father!”

  “Stellar qualities?” Jenny stared at Alex before breaking out in harsh laughter. “There are babies all over Leslie’s Crossing,” Jenny said once she’d stopped laughing, her voice darkening. “Nathan and Ailish seem intent on populating the world by themselves, and then there’s Constance, and I…I…” She looked away.

  “Jenny…” Alex clasped her hand. “The babies will come. You’ll see, they’ll come.” Jenny hung her head, refusing to meet Alex’s eyes. “But don’t lose your husband on the way. Don’t let this become a wall between you.” To Alex’s surprise, Jenny slid to her knees, buried her head in Alex’s skirts, and cried.

  When Alex left an hour or so later, she was very pleased with herself. They’d had a long heart to heart about the importance of nurturing a relationship, and a red-nosed Jenny had promised that she’d follow Alex’s advice and use the trip to Providence to try and find her way back to Ian.

  “Don’t forget to touch him – often,” Alex had said, having to smile at Jenny’s scandalised look. “Not like that, silly. Like this…” She’d exemplified by brushing her hand gently down Jenny’s arm.

  Alex smiled pleasantly at Angus when he popped up from behind the woodshed. He gave her a shy smile in return before falling in behind her. Alex swung her basket and hummed to herself. A good day’s work, all in all, and on top of that her basket was full of mushrooms. She decided to fry them with finely chopped onion and parsley, and then she and Matthew could have them for supper – only he and she, in the privacy of their bedroom. And while she was at it, she was going to talk to him about Patrick – she hadn’t liked the way he had looked at Jenny when they came out of Jenny’s kitchen, a lascivious glint in his eyes.

  *

  Jenny waved Alex off, ignored Patrick’s heated gaze and stepped back inside, leaning heavily against the door. She wasn’t sure how all this had started. There’d been the time when she had run into Patrick in the forest, and he had handed her a flower. There’d been the time when he held her hand to help her across the stream, and all that had been innocent enough, at least on her part. And then, several months ago, he had cornered her in the stable and kissed her. Jenny had been so angry, raising her hand to slap him away, but all he had done was grab her hand and kiss her again, forcing himself into her mouth and leaving both of them panting – him with arousal, her with what she assumed to be rage. But she hadn’t told Ian, and next morning, Patrick had smirked and grazed the back of his hand against her bosom.

  He hounded her; he kissed her again, holding her still against the stable wall; he fondled her breasts leaving her in a state of severe disarray.

  “I’ll tell my husband!” she’d hissed back in June, backing away from him while she adjusted her bodice.

  “Do that,” he’d sneered. “Do that, and I’ll tell him you’ve been kissing me back for weeks.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she’d protested, her cheeks mottling with shame – because she hadn’t stopped him either, had she? She was filled with conflicting
emotions. One part of her was insulted, another part was mortified, but there was a third part as well: the very big part that liked the way Patrick held her, how his lips felt. That made her even more ashamed, and suddenly the time frame in which she could have told Ian was gone, and she had no idea what to do.

  Patrick was like a predator. Confidently, he circled his wounded prey, the circles narrowing until that day in July when he found her in the dairy shed, pressed her down on the workbench, and took her. Not a sound had she uttered, and when he was done, he’d re-laced his breeches, smoothed down her skirts, and walked off. She’d heard him whistling when he resumed his wood chopping, and between her legs, his come had oozed. Jenny had remained where she was for a long time, her eyes firmly shut.

  After that, she was trapped. Should she attempt to say no, he threatened her with telling Ian, and no matter how much effort she put in staying away from him, he always found her. He had the upper hand, and he enjoyed it, caressing his crotch as he used his head to indicate that he wanted her to go to the stable, or behind the privy, or into the woods, and Jenny would do as he wished. Even worse, Jenny looked forward to these quick copulations, finding a release in them she no longer found with Ian – not now that their lovemaking had become nothing but a chore.

  She cleared away the mugs, brushed the table clean of crumbs, and sat down to think. This had to stop, and it had to stop now. Three days in a row, she had thrown up behind the privy, and her courses were four weeks late for the first time in five years. She leaned her forehead into her hands to stop her head from spinning with shame and hope and revulsion, and took several deep breaths. Oh God, what was she to do?

  Chapter 6

  Peter handed Constance Leslie down from her dappled mare and turned to beam at Alex, pointing at his new son, fast asleep in the arms of his nurse.

  “Two sons!” Peter looked proud enough to burst.

  “Three if we’re going to be correct,” Alex reminded him, receiving a grateful smile from Peter’s eldest son, Nathan Leslie, who was busy unhorsing his sizeable family. Ailish snickered and winked at Alex before sliding with considerable grace into the receiving arms of her husband, despite her pregnant state.

  “You know what I mean,” Peter said with an edge. “Two boys in two years. Is she not a marvel?”

  Constance smiled weakly, her overlarge eyes flashing in the direction of Nathan. No love lost there, Alex concluded.

  After spending an adequate amount of time admiring Peter’s baby son, Alex went over to greet Thomas and Mary Leslie, at present busy talking with their daughter, Naomi. Where Peter was all bluster and show, his elder brother Thomas was a nondescript, quiet man. As always, Thomas was in his customary grey, with grey eyes and sparse grey hair that hung lank down to his shoulders, and beside him stood his plump little wife, as colourless as her husband. Compared to them, Naomi sparkled with colour and energy, her skin rosy, and what little could be seen of her hair gleaming in the September sun.

  “Do you think she might be a changeling?” Mark asked Alex.

  “Mark!” Alex hissed.

  “One can always hope,” her son muttered, before hurrying over to greet his parents-in-law. Alex tilted her head. Naomi was in no way a beauty, but somehow her parents’ best features had combined into a pleasant whole, and thankfully the girl seemed to have inherited her brain from her father rather than her mother. Shame on you, she chided herself, Mary is a nice woman. Yeah, with the intellectual agility of a ten-year-old.

  Matthew appeared from one of the storage sheds, cradling a cask of beer.

  “Just what one needs on day such as this.” Peter flapped his hat to create some air.

  Matthew nodded and winked at Alex, no doubt to remind her that this was her idea, not his. She stuck her tongue out in response, before suggesting in a loud voice that they should all take their seats at the trestle tables set up below the trees.

  Alex had on purpose placed Jenny at the very far end of the table, with Peter exactly opposite, his new wife beside him. But, with the sensitivity of a bull in a china shop, Peter insisted that his daughter come and sit closer so that she could properly admire the new addition to the Leslie family: little James.

  “James?” Jenny gave him a cool look.

  Peter looked up from where he was studying the vegetable pie that Alex had set in front of him. “James,” he said, through his half-full mouth. “Mmm,” he added, directing himself to Alex, “quite tasty.”

  “James is dead.” Jenny’s voice was loud enough to stop all activity at the table.

  “Jenny,” Ian said, placing a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off.

  “He died with your wife, my mother, in April of 1676, and at the time of his death, he was eight years old.”

  “I know how old he was,” Peter snapped back.

  “And still you give his name to that?” Jenny made a face and stood up. “And if you have a girl, will you name her Jenny? Or why not Elizabeth, in honour of the wife who gave you ten live children?”

  Peter had gone an interesting shade of dirty pink, glaring at his daughter. “I’ll name my children as I see fit.” He looked her up and down and expanded his chest, raising his receding chin in a gesture of defiance. “I can’t help it that my wife is fertile, daughter. And mayhap you should wonder at your own barrenness and pray that the good Lord forgive you whatever transgression it is that’s making you incapable of bearing children.”

  “Peter!” Alex exclaimed at the same time as Jenny raised a pitcher of ale and upended it over her father before stalking off.

  “That was very cruel,” Ian said to Peter before hurrying after his wife.

  *

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Alex said defensively to Matthew much later. She sank down to sit in one of their few armchairs and frowned. “He shouldn’t have said that, and when that little tight-arsed wife of his proceeded to tell us how it was a known fact that barrenness was a divine punishment, well…”

  Matthew added another log to the fire and sat back down. “It didn’t help when you told her that someone with as little sense as she did best in keeping her mouth shut.”

  Peter had been out of his seat like an aggravated stoat, demanding an apology, and Alex had exploded, telling him not be such an old fart, and so the party had come to an end before it had even begun, with an apologetic Thomas trailing his brother.

  “True, nonetheless,” Mrs Parson said. “And it was a mightily heartless thing for a father to say to his lass.”

  “Aye, that it was,” Matthew agreed.

  Alex pursed her lips. The expression on Jenny’s face had been not only of hurt and anger, but also of something else but, try as she might, Alex couldn’t quite figure out what.

  “But Mr Leslie’s right,” Betty said from behind them. “My mother always says how a woman unable to conceive must look deep within and pray for forgiveness.” She flushed under their combined eyes.

  “Easy to say if you conceive with the ease of a rabbit,” Alex snorted.

  Betty’s face turned crimson.

  “I didn’t mean your mother,” Alex said hastily. “You know I’m very fond of Esther. I was thinking more along the lines of sweet Constance.”

  “Sweet?” Betty looked confused. “I don’t find her sweet.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes brimming. “She asked me if I was the little fool who had opened my legs on the basis of a worthless promise.”

  “If you plan on weeping every time someone tells you the truth, you’ll spend most of your life in tears,” Mrs Parson said to her. “It was a daft thing to do, no?”

  Betty shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Ah, lass.” Mrs Parson sighed, not unkindly. “And what if you’d been with child? How would you have cared for it, with the father on the high seas?”

  “I can sew, or go into service,” Betty replied, without much conviction.

  “That won’t be necessary, lassie. You bide with us, aye?” Matthew patted the stool beside
his chair. “You’re family now.”

  With a shy smile, Betty went and sat beside him.

  Alex smothered a smile at the tenderness in Matthew’s voice. Children and puppies, kittens and babies in general, brought out a very soft side in him, a side generally reserved for her only. She slid her eyes sideways to study him in the firelight, and it struck her, as it sometimes did, that both of them were growing older. There were permanent creases on his forehead, a deep groove from nose to the corner of his mouth, and several small wrinkles around his eyes.

  As if in response to her cataloguing, he straightened up and smiled into the fire. Just like that, he reverted to being as he’d been when she first met him, on a heat infested day in August when a bolt of thunder rent the veil of time apart and sent her hurtling through it. Her man: tall and strong, with magical hazel eyes and a long, generous mouth. Alex raised the back of her hand to his cheek, and he leaned into her touch with an almost inaudible sigh.

  *

  “It would help if you moved out of the way,” Alex said a couple of days later, prodding at the huge dog that lay across the threshold. Narcissus yawned and settled his head on his paws, the deep brown eyes never leaving Hannah who was playing with a soft doll made from leftover yarn and bits and pieces.

  Naomi grinned at Alex and went back to her kneading. “He’s very protective of her, aren’t you, little Narcissus?”

  The dog wagged his tail in response to his name.

  “Little? He’s the size of a calf!” Alex bent down to scratch his yellow head. “But he’s probably the best nursemaid I’ve ever seen. So,” Alex said, sitting down to watch Naomi work, “have you spoken to your parents?”

  Naomi snorted loudly. “You know I have.” She used the back of her forearm to wipe a strand of hair out of the way, dusted some flour over the dough, covered it, and set it to the side. “Constance has quite the tongue on her. As long as Uncle Peter isn’t around, of course – then she is silent and meek.”

  “Aye.” Mrs Parson nodded. “She’s wily, that one.”