Love's Awakening (The Ballantyne Legacy Book #2): A Novel (29 page)

When, Jack wondered, had Teague’s Tavern lost its appeal? Cicero moved past its battered façade, a shutter still askew from the storm of months before. At the hitch rail, he spied Wade’s stallion tethered alongside half a dozen other horses. Lately Jack preferred Benedict’s, a more genteel establishment at the heart of town, its aspect a pleasing green, the patrons reputable, the fare celebrated.

He’d not find such accommodations farther west, and this sharpened his appreciation as he took a table by a window with a view of the street. There’d been no supper waiting at home. Mrs. Malarkey was visiting her sister in Washington County, and he’d sent Chloe back to Broad Oak that very afternoon, Ben accompanying her. It was only he and Sol and a few stable hands now. River Hill seemed silent as a tomb.

“Mr. Turlock, sir.” A serving girl was at his elbow with a deferential smile, making him feel almost respectable. “What will you be wanting this evening? A meal or some ale?”

“A meal, if you will. Some cider.”

She drew a harried breath. “Supper might take a wee bit longer than usual.” Her tone was a touch apologetic. “We’ve a large party expected, and Cook has his hands full.”

“No matter,” Jack told her, meaning it. He had no desire to return to an empty house. His gaze halted for a brief instant on Dr. Brunot seated in a far corner. “Is the doctor dining alone, do you know?”

“Aye, that he is.” She looked Brunot’s way, concern darkening her plump face before she returned to the kitchen.

In the light of the sconce affixed above the table, the doctor
looked undeniably haggard. Burdened. So at odds with the diners engaging in lively conversation all around him. Jack felt a tug of concern but shrugged it away as a pewter mug was set down in front of him.

He reached into his pocket and extracted a list of supplies he’d need for the journey west, some of which would be gotten at the Ballantyne mercantile. Though the keelboat he’d take wasn’t Ballantyne made, it would dock at the boatyard for cargo. He knew the captain well enough and trusted they’d make the six-hundred-mile journey from Pittsburgh to Louisville and then on to St. Louis in good time, barring snags, log jams, and the like.

Turning the paper over, he reviewed a crude map, wondering if he’d gotten all the details right. Once he began the trek up the Missouri River, he’d stay clear of Fort Osage, established years before to search vessels for illegal whiskey, and proceed on to Fort Lock. He’d already secured a trading license, allowing him to enter Indian territory with the agreed-upon eight hundred gallons of whiskey, but he’d need to post a bond that he’d not sell to the natives once there.

Despite all this, the boat’s deepest recesses would carry all the equipment necessary to build a distillery at the mouth of the Iowa River. Henry Turlock vehemently opposed any restrictions on the whiskey trade, operating as though none existed and expecting everyone else to fall in line. There was much at stake. The trek west would be a test of Jack’s powers of deception and double dealing.

I don’t care what you do just as long as you don’t get caught doing it.

Weighted by his father’s words, he looked out the window to street lamps burning brighter in the dusk, illuminating an impressive party on the tavern walk, the curb crowded
with carriages. ’Twas Silas Ballantyne and family, a few close friends. Ellie.

He focused on her alone, going cold at the sight of Daniel Cameron clutching her gloved arm. In the glare of lamplight, she looked every bit as lovely as she’d been at the ball, dressed just as finely in a blue gown, pearls in her dark, upswept hair. He found it nigh impossible to look away from her.

The Ballantynes were the expected party, then. He heard them enter the adjoining foyer and breathed easier when they disappeared into a private room in back. That it was a celebration of some sort there could be no doubt. The betrothal that wasn’t announced at the ball? Some business deal? Maybe another birthday?

He took another sip of cider as if to dampen his disquiet, hating the hunger he felt to be among them—to be one of them. For the first time since his father began pushing him west, he felt a sweeping relief he’d not have to stay on . . . and watch Ellie’s courtship play out before his very eyes. He was leaving even earlier than planned, and not a day too soon.

“Jack?” The voice at his elbow ended his musings. “Mind if I join you?”

He looked up into the familiar face of Dr. Brunot. At Jack’s nod, the doctor took a chair, pulled a pipe from his pocket, and lit it by the single taper at the table’s center. The flame flared brighter, drawing attention to deep bruises and a chilling laceration across his left cheek.

Jack felt a startling revulsion. “You look in need of some doctoring.”

Through the smoke, the weary eyes regarded him solemnly. “Unfortunately, these are only the injuries you can see.”

“Someone waylaid you on the road.” At Brunot’s nod, he continued, “Who?”

“You’re more likely to know the answer to that than I.”

Jack tensed and Brunot raised a hand as if to deflect his reproving look. “I don’t mean to implicate you. I’m just seeking answers.”

Feigning calm, Jack leaned back in his chair and took another drink, thoughts still full of Ellie.

The doctor drew hard on his pipe, casting a look about the room. “Opposition is growing fiercer toward those of us who help fugitives—more beatings, threats, torched homes and barns. As a result, save the Quakers, we’re losing support. Some have even become proslavery spies under threat. We no longer know who we can trust.”

“It’s a dangerous game.”

“Aye, and becoming more so.” Brunot kept his voice low. “There’s a group known as the Pittsburgh kidnapping ring made up of professional slave hunters, city constables, and lawyers who are abducting free blacks and selling them south. Your father and brother are said to be among them.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jack told him, “but I know nothing about it.”

“I’m asking you to find out.”

Jack’s resistance climbed. He took another drink, wishing for something more bracing than cider. Just when he thought he was free of Allegheny County, the Turlock taint, something new surfaced. “What good will it do?”

“We need your help. The other night when I was waylaid on the road after making a medical call, these men—all masked—demanded I furnish them with the names of local abolitionists. They specifically wanted to know if Silas Ballantyne is involved. Word is they mean him harm and will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. I refused to give them what they wanted, thus the beating.”

“They mean to make an example of Ballantyne, then.”

“They mean to ruin him. Silas has his enemies—those
who are jealous of his success and despise his benevolence, his antislavery views. Some pretend to be his friends who I suspect are part of this ring and would rejoice to see him brought low.”

“He’s aware of the trouble, I take it?”

“Aye, aware and steadfast. He won’t turn back.” Brunot leaned forward entreatingly. “Jack, you have connections we abolitionists lack. ’Tis imperative we know who we’re dealing with, who may be posing as antislavers but are spies instead.”

“You want me to learn what I can from my father and brother, ask around town.”

“They’d never suspect you.” His eyes shone with renewed vigor. “You’ve given them no reason to believe you’re sympathetic to our cause.”

None but putting a gun to Wade’s head and shoving a McTavish against a wall.

“I don’t know that
sympathetic
is the right word. As for Jarm and Cherry—” Jack hesitated, thinking back on the turn of events. “I had no choice but to take them in.”

“You had a choice, Jack.” Brunot’s gaze held firm. “You chose to help. That made you one of us, if only for a moment in time. You’ve told no one what you’ve done, nor exposed the rest of us.”

“I leave in three days. Little time to be of use—”

“You underestimate yourself—and leave me few options.” With a sigh, he set his pipe aside. “I’ve been considering riding out to Broad Oak—”

“Don’t.” Jack felt a chill even as he said the word. He held Brunot’s gaze in warning. “Don’t cross my father.”

The serving girl returned with a steaming plate, interrupting their unsettling conversation, but supper no longer held any appeal. He made no attempt to eat but sat and fought his rising panic that the Ballantynes . . . Ellie . . . were
undoubtedly a target. Though he’d weighed and measured their motives in helping fugitives, no amount of reasoning could account for such risk.

“Why in God’s name do you abolitionists do what you do?”

Brunot stood, pipe clutched in his fist. “That’s just it, Jack. ’Tis done in God’s name, all of it.”

He moved toward the door, his slow gait indicative of his injuries. Jack watched him go, his meal untouched. No doubt, like Silas Ballantyne, the doctor would continue assisting slaves till his dying day.

No matter the danger.

 29 

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

R
OBERT
B
ROWNING

Broad Oak, framed by the fading September sunset, was awash in crimson and gold. Jack dismounted at the front of the house, but before he’d tethered Cicero to the hitch rail, Chloe came flying out the door and into his arms, nearly knocking him off his feet. Wordless, she clung to him a moment too long, and he sensed her unspoken misery, her longing to return to River Hill. His throat locked tight as he held her, one hand awkwardly patting the straw-colored braid that snaked down her back.

She looked up at him, a plea in her damp eyes. “Pa says you’re leaving—sooner than planned.”

“Aye, day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, Jack, what will I do?” Her voice caught on the end, half cry. “I don’t have Miss Ellie any longer, and now I won’t have you.”

“There’s Sally and Ben,” he said. “You can visit Sol and Mrs. Malarkey whenever you like. Go fishing, riding.”

“But it won’t be the same.” Her chin trembled. “Please take me with you. I won’t be a burden. I’ll even mend your clothes. Miss Ellie taught me to sew, remember. We can read those books—”

“She also taught you to pen a letter. ‘Jack Turlock, Fort Lock, Missouri Territory.’” Taking her by the arm, he went inside the house, eyes trailing to the stairwell ceiling, where oil-brushed angels played their harps, reminding him again of Ellie. Miserable, he looked away.

Chloe followed him out the back door, voice low. “Ma has a headache and is abed. Wade and Pa are—well, you know where. Ma says they should just camp by the stills this time of year.”

He caught the derision in her tone, fueled by Isabel’s dislike of the entire whiskey enterprise. Whiskey was too common, she often said. Far beneath her O’Hara roots. Though whiskey was made year round at Broad Oak, it was made round the clock during the fall run.

They approached the bustling distillery, the scent of the mash tubs, seething with fermenting grain, overpowering and ripe. He much preferred the storage houses where whiskey cooling in oak barrels held the tang of ripe apples. Taking out a handkerchief, Chloe covered her nose. Ellie’s influence, likely. The smell had never bothered her before.

“Pa says it’s the largest run so far,” she managed through the embroidered linen.

Lights flickered inside buildings, illuminating near-ceaseless activity. A great many Turlock slaves, brought up from Kentucky, were at work, their dark faces shining with sweat and intensity. He heard raucous laughter erupt from Josiah Kilgore’s office, followed by Henry’s deeply resonant voice.

His mood soured, fueled by Dr. Brunot’s concerns at Benedict’s the night before. When he filled the door frame of the ledger-lined office, the merriment died. Chloe stood in his
shadow, and he felt an odd impulse to protect her from the epithets and crassness that flowed as freely as the whiskey.

Jack hated the insolence on Wade’s face. The smug complacency on his father’s. An old, irrational wish buried from boyhood took hold—that the open fires necessary for producing all that whiskey would turn explosive. Fire was a constant threat, given the highly flammable nature of alcohol, and required extreme vigilance. It was his father’s only fear.

“So, Jack, ready to head west?” Henry set an empty tumbler on the table, eyes narrowing in question.

“Aye, the
Independence
takes on cargo tomorrow,” he answered, “and leaves the day after.”

Henry refilled his glass and held the liquor, now aged a pleasing crimson-gold, to the light. “All is in order, I hope.”

He meant the distilling equipment, of course, packed in crates and marked as something else entirely. The deception nettled Jack as never before.

“The plan is in place for me to join you in spring,” Josiah Kilgore was saying. “I’ll bring a number of carpenters and slaves to build a replica of the distillery here on a smaller scale.”

Jack bit down hard on his tongue, lest he say he’d not be waiting. He’d deliver the whiskey, off-load the still farther up the Missouri, and that would be the end of the Turlock whiskey enterprise. He’d then head west unencumbered.

“By the time that first crop of wheat and rye are in, you’ll be ready for a solid run. My goal is four hundred gallons—and no opposition.” Henry’s smile was tight. “I’ve just received word that Fort Lock and its commander are eagerly awaiting you.”

“Blast, Jack!” Wade managed a wink. “You’ll be the most popular man west of the Mississippi. Makes me wish I wasn’t tied to home.”

Jack fought down the sickening certainty that once he’d gone, all pandemonium would break loose. His father had
other motives for sending him on this mission. Henry Turlock wanted him out of the way. Jack had been a fool for protesting early on. It had sent a red flag to his cunning, farsighted father that he had Ballantyne sympathies. And Henry, determined to bring Silas down, wanted no opposition.

Swallowing hard, he opened his mouth to utter something about Dr. Brunot being waylaid and beaten, anything that would counter the deceit and ill will that thickened the room. But a distinct check, firm as a restraining hand, gave him pause.

Say nothing.

The words were as clear as if they’d been spoken outside himself, yet were buried soul-deep. Blood pounding in his ears, he heeded the voice, though it took every shred of will not to knock Wade down and take his father by the throat. Violence had ever been the Turlock way and was all he knew.

Ira furor brevis est.
Anger is temporary madness.

“You don’t look well, Brother. Here, have a drink.” Wade pushed a glass toward him, but Chloe sprang between Jack and the table, the look of Isabel engraved in every hard line of her face.

“You know Jack doesn’t like whiskey and never has!”

At this, Henry simply refilled his own glass in smooth defiance. “Daughter, you’d do well to sound less like your mother and remember where your fortune lies.”

Cowed by the stern reproof, she sought the safety of Jack’s shadow as Wade’s bloodshot gaze trailed after her. Jack took a last look around the cluttered office before going out without another word, Chloe on his heels.

“You’d better say something to Sally,” she whispered.

But Jack’s eye was on the main house and the darkened panes of their mother’s bedchamber. He wouldn’t bid Isabel
goodbye, given her dislike of sentiment or any emotional display. And given the knot in his throat, he couldn’t say goodbye to Sally either.

Instead he tarried at the hitch rail in front where Cicero waited, dusk cloaking the grounds. Everything looked and smelled old . . . faded. Like autumn. Chloe was struggling again—he could feel it, the burden of a long separation between them. She seemed like a little girl now, braid unraveling, eyes shot through with sadness.

“When will you be back, Jack?”

The vulnerability in her expression tore at him.

He wouldn’t tell her he wasn’t coming back. That he would finally be free. Of his past. Their family’s reputation. His unrelenting anguish over Ellie. He’d keep going west, take a new name. Become lost in the wilderness, where no one knew him or cared who he was.

He reached out and pulled her to him in an awkward embrace. “I don’t know, Chloe. There are a great many things beyond my control.” His aching head spun with all the possibilities. “I’ll write to you and you’ll write to me.” The promise of some tie, some link across the miles, was hollow comfort. He didn’t know if letters ever reached the West. “I’ve been thinking, come spring, you could plant that corner of the garden you and Ellie started.”

She gave a little nod.

“Sol said he’d help. Ben too.” He paused, the pain in his chest building. “It would be good to think of you there, in that sunny corner, waiting for me—” His voice broke, betraying him. His hand closed about her braid. “Maybe you can make it fine again.”

She bent her head, her arms tight around him. “I’ll pray for you, Jack.”

“Ellie taught you that too, I’ll wager.”

She swiped at a tear with a quick hand. “She always prayed with me before lessons. She prayed for you.”

He turned away before she could read the telling wetness in his own eyes and swung himself into the saddle. Atop Cicero, he felt on firmer ground save Chloe’s last, startling words. So Ellie prayed for him. He wasn’t surprised, but he couldn’t help wondering what she prayed for. The entreaties were endless, he guessed.

He was a Turlock, after all.

Ribbons of light lay across the oak floor of Jack’s bedchamber, gilding the contents of an open trunk and the field desk beside it. He’d taken pains to pack as lightly as he could but sensed he’d soon regret it. Leaving civilization far behind was a daunting prospect. A few things he couldn’t do without—extra quills, ink and paper, his shaving kit . . . the Bible Silas Ballantyne had given him. Freshly laundered linen shirts, dark pants, wool stockings, and boots littered the worn rug at his feet. His weapons were hidden.

Morning would come all too soon. Straddling a chair by a window, he turned his back on the upheaval all around him and tried to quiet his thoughts. Through the glass, the Monongahela, ever fitful, winked at him with a blue eye as the afternoon sun began to slide west. Yet another reminder of his destination. As consuming as the coming journey was, it took up far less of his thoughts than the trouble at hand.

He’d lain awake half the night pondering Dr. Brunot’s dire words, knowing he could do little to stop the coming conflict. Allegheny County was fast becoming a battleground, but what a strange battle it was. The real evil was slavery, and it drove men to extreme measures. And it would be the means by which the Turlocks and their allies brought the Ballantynes down.

Till now he’d never felt driven to his knees. Never gave way to emotion. But there was no denying he was coming apart inside, anguish and grief and guilt forcing him to the floor. Once there, ignorant of how to pray, all he could utter were a few paltry words.

God, help
. . .
Stop my father and Wade. Protect the Ballantynes
. . .
Help me get free of this suffocating desire for a woman I cannot have.

He got to his feet and circled the room, tossing a few more items into the open trunk. Dusk was falling and the minutes had slowed to a crawl. He needed to go for a ride before stabling Cicero for good. Head into town for supper at Benedict’s. Check the cargo now loaded aboard the keelboat a final time. But none of it held the slightest appeal.

He was so preoccupied, he failed to see the shadow darken the door frame till Sol’s voice broke over him, hesitant and apologetic, as if sensing his turbulent mood.

“Pardon, sir.”

Jack swung around and faced him. “No pardon needed, Sol.”

“Someone’s here to see you.” He looked perplexed but pleased. “It’s Miz Ellie. I put her in the blue room. The front parlor.”

Ellie?
Jack felt surprise wash his face.

“I’ll keep her coachman company while you’re . . . um, occupied.”

With that, he trod away, leaving Jack to ponder the impossible. Ellie here? Why? Suspecting Chloe of some prank, he left his bedchamber and descended the stairs, noticing the door to the parlor, usually shut, was wide open. Mindful of his unruly hair, the rasp of beard darkening his jaw, he crossed the wide foyer, wishing he’d made himself more presentable.