It Happened in the Highlands(16)

Her shoes and skirts were wet and stained with mud, but Jo strode on as  questions about her mother again blotted out any other thought. Last  night, she'd again paged through the portfolio of sketches Dr. McKendry  sent her. Her birth mother. A woman she'd never seen, but who'd died  bringing Jo into the world. For all the love she'd been blessed with in  her life from her adoptive mother and father, holding the drawings in  her hand still elicited a deep ache in her chest.                       
       
           



       

As the night wore on, Jo focused on details in the backgrounds of the  drawings. A distinctive shape of a hill, a crumbling stone wall, a mill.  Each of them seemed to represent a particular place, perhaps a specific  memory in the ailing man's mind.

She wondered how Graham and Mrs. Barton would react if she paid a visit  to Tilmory Castle, and whether she'd find those places in the drawings  there. If their response to seeing her yesterday was any indication, she  wouldn't be received at all.

A flock of geese suddenly took wing in a meadow beyond the brook, their  pure white bellies a stark contrast against the brown feathers of their  backs. The cause of their flight soon became apparent, and Jo  immediately wished she too could escape as she recognized the man  walking toward her.

Wynne saw her, paused, and then waved. She watched him as he strode  across, his long coat open. He was hatless, and buff-colored buckskin  breeches hugged muscled thighs above his high boots. All thoughts of  escaping fled. For a prolonged moment, time flew backwards. Jo's skin  tingled and she fought the urge to lift the hem of her skirts and run to  meet him.

Instead, Jo pulled her shawl tightly around her as she stopped and waited for him to approach.

"You're an early riser," he said, after they exchanged greetings.

Not as early as he was, she thought, noting the hint of tiredness in his  eyes. His hair bore evidence of fingers raking through it. Despite his  obvious weariness, however, she thought he looked magnificent.

"Too many days trapped inside that carriage. I had to take the  opportunity this beautiful countryside offered," she explained, looking  in the direction he'd come. "I thought I'd walk that way if you think  the people living at that house wouldn't mind me trespassing on their  land."

Wynne looked back at the tower house. "I'll walk with you and make certain they don't."

Jo's intention was to go in the opposite direction of where he was  traveling. There was no avoiding it. Wynne gave her no chance to object.

Regardless of what reason dictated, her heart directed her actions. They  walked for a while in silence, and her recollections about their past  continued. The way he walked with one hand tucked behind his back, his  strides adjusting to match the length of hers, his distance courteous  and yet close enough that she would occasionally feel the brush of his  coat. She filled her lungs with dawn air, and made herself think of the  present rather than the past.

"I must apologize for last night," she said finally. "I should have told  you right away I'd seen your son in the stairwell." Of everything on  her mind, this was the least troubling of her thoughts.

"You have no need to apologize, especially to me," Wynne replied. "I'm  the one who should express my remorse over every wrong I've done you."

"Pray don't," she broke in, unwilling to dredge up the old memories.

The pained expression revealed his disappointment at being interrupted.  Jo knew what she was doing. She was robbing him of a chance to confess, a  chance to be absolved of the past. But she wasn't ready. She couldn't  wash away the consequences of his action after a few words of apology.  And she knew she couldn't trust herself. She could easily crumble before  his eyes.

"I have a proposition," she said. "I should like to pretend we're two  people whose history began yesterday. Could we do that, do you think?  Begin again as strangers? Or perhaps as friendly acquaintances?"

"If you wish it, Jo."

Jo. Hearing her name on his lips was a contradiction to what she'd asked. He was challenging her. He was daring her to remember.

As they walked, she focused on the path, but the weight of his gaze  remained on her face. She didn't want to revisit the day he'd broken off  the engagement. That day and his duel with Hugh the following morning  and all the days after were too painful. She didn't want to return to  that time when she'd became a shell of a person with a heart wilted and  dying inside. It hurt too much to remember.

She forcibly buried the ache once again beneath the sediment of the  years, and glanced over at him. "Tell me. Were you able to find the man  who instigated the attack?"                       
       
           



       

"No. We searched the Abbey grounds last night. Abram was working in the kitchens, but he's definitely fled."

"Do you have any idea why he'd do such a thing?" Jo was feeling much  more at ease when nothing of their own personal entanglement was a part  of the conversation.

"It's difficult to say," he replied, shaking his head. "Charles Barton  was a shipowner, as well as a local landowner. As you heard his mother  say, that part of his life has been a mystery to her. It's possible he  has any number of enemies. One of them could have been behind last  night's attack."

Jo wondered how long Barton had been away from Tilmory Castle. If it was  during that time he crossed paths with the woman in his drawings, she  might never know more than she knew now. Unless he improved.

The path brought them to a log that crossed the brook. He climbed ahead and his hand reached out to assist her.

"I want to thank you for the talk you had with Cuffe last night. You were quite persuasive. He responded to you."

She slipped her fingers into his warm hand and climbed onto the log. The  feel of their skins blending into one, the strength of his touch . . .  it was all so familiar, as if she'd never lost him. History existed  between them that refused to remain buried.

"Your son knew he'd done wrong before he saw me. His remorse and  whatever apologies he made afterward were his alone. I was only the  spark."

"He spoke to me. That was the first time."

As they reached the other side, he stepped down and grasped her by the  waist and gently placed her on solid ground. It took a moment for the  beating of her heart to slow enough to allow her to speak.

"What do you mean, ‘first time'?"

"I mean, last night was the first time he'd spoken to me since he was a very small child."

Jo stared into his face. "But I heard from Mrs. McKendry that your wife  died at childbirth. Didn't you and Cuffe see each other as he was  growing?"

"My orders kept me busy at sea for years," he retorted, his tone  indicating his irritation at having to explain. "Between fighting the  French and the Americans, stopping over at Falmouth was very difficult.  Of course, I saw him a handful of times that first year. But after that,  his grandmother took him to live in the hills. I don't need to tell you  about my parents. It wasn't as if I could entrust a mulatto son to  their care. He was better off in Jamaica."

His parents. The past that she wanted to forget. The baronet and his  wife. Intimidating people who managed to make Jo feel small and  deficient from the moment she first met them. She couldn't blame Wynne  for not taking his son to them. Cold and aloof, they could have never  done an adequate job of raising Cuffe. Jo knew nothing of Wynne's wife,  but right now warm feelings of empathy for the woman coursed through  her.

"I provided for him. I urged Cuffe's grandmother to bring him to  Falmouth or Montego Bay. She could have lived quite comfortably if she  chose to do so. But her decision was to stay in a village in the hills  among the Maroons. That was where the lad was raised."

Because of her adoptive family's lifelong work to abolish the evils of  slavery, Jo was very familiar with the Maroons. They were the  unconquered fighters waging war from Jamaica's mountainous and forested  interior. A constant threat to the government's efforts to further the  interests of the plantation owners, for a century they'd been inciting  periodic conflict, outwitting the military and spreading terror to the  doors of the slavers. Never wasting a shot or an opportunity to inspire  rebellion in the sugar fields, the Maroon communities of free men and  women welcomed escaped slaves willing to fight for their independence.  Not an army in Europe was strong enough to quell these warriors. And the  Maroons continued to thwart island administrators and force them to  negotiate for peace, securing agreements that successive governors would  ignore at their peril.