“He has taught me since. A man has to fight. There is little else for one not born to title and land.”
“I was born to title and land, and I have now naught but a loom.”
“So, you will fight with your loom.”
I thought that was foolish, but I said nothing. Instead, I asked, “Why do you carry pipes?”
“You saw? How did you know what it was?”
“There was a painting in Pa’s study. A man in kilts playing pipes.”
“It makes a sound to wake the dead and call forth the living. Puts the fear of hell into the heart of any Englishman.”
“You are an Englishman.”
“I am a Scot. I will never be an Englishman.”
“My pa was English. My ma, Scots. I thought they were the same. The only people who seemed different than us were the Africans. Now, I am Jamaican but you and I both live on colonial soil.”
“Soil the English took from some other poor farmers.”
“Cullah, if you’re never to be English, why do you wish to live here? Why don’t you go home to Scotland?”
“It is as Pa said. We don’t live to go somewhere else or to do some future thing. We fight if we have to, but we try to make a living. This is the life I have.”
“For seven years, I have only been able to go on by thinking that this was not my life. That I had something to go to, to escape to.”
“That is hard. As if you’re living but not alive.”
“What will I do, if I do not long to go to Jamaica? Who am I if not Allan Talbot’s second daughter? Where shall I be without Two Crowns Plantation?”
“Why not be Miss Talbot the weaver, of Lexington and Concord? Maker of fine woolens and linen, keeper of some acres of forage and pasture, hills and forest, and a wee graveyard? Why not?”
“I am not made to be a tradeswoman. A crafter. I was born a lady.”
“And so you will not be a tradeswoman. You will be the planter’s daughter who has a skill and uses it wisely. You will find another reason to live.”
“I am being punished by God.”
“Hah. That is why almost everyone who meets you thinks you to be the highest and noblest? Goody Carnegie gives you her family land. Lady Spencer treats you as an honored child. Even the old buzzards in their plain garb come to find you in sin and as God would have it that is the night we slept with Goody and you were safely in your own wee house. Your house. You have a surfeit of good and call it punishment. Are you quite sure you are not really an unhappy fairy?”
“No, I am not.”
“I have to admit, at first I thought you were.”
“Bless me. Why?”
He grinned. “Never had I seen a lass as cunning as you. So fair, it was as if you sprang from the light flickering through a maple leaf in autumn. So clear of complexion, I thought you’d skin made of milk and water. Your hair is, is—” He stopped, suddenly embarrassed. “Beg pardon. I didn’t mean to speak so personally.”
“You are forgiven. Please. Let us have some food.”
But as I turned to straighten my gown, my eyes took hold of his. In a moment I remembered Wallace using the ruse of reaching across me to take a kiss. When Cullah leaned his head toward me, pausing, hesitant lest I push away or call out, I needed no ruse. His lips enveloped mine and I pressed against him, held securely by his strong arms, feeling the soft stubble of his chin. He raised one hand to cradle my face and I leaned against it, and though the kiss lasted far too long to be proper, when at last he pulled away, I closed my eyes and pressed my head against that hand.
He laid his cheek tenderly against mine and whispered in my ear, “Miss Resolute Talbot, thou art the blithest maid e’er walked the dews of Skye.”
“That sounds almost like a song,” I said.
“It is. That is the English for that song I tried to teach you.”
“I will not be happy when you are finished working on this house.”
“But, we are finished. We would have gone before now were it not for your fit.”
“Fit?”
“Well, what do you call it? Your spell. Your grief. I went through the same though I was but a boy when my ma died. For two days you had frightening dreams, for you called out. But you seem better now. We have work to do.”
“But where will you live?”
“In Concord. We have a shop there. Where did you think?”
CHAPTER 21
October 30, 1736