“How thrilling, Cousin.” Rosalyn tilted her head, sending a cluster of curls swinging against her slender neck. “Though for all its adventure I cannot see how you brought yourself to quit a city like Boston for the society of savages.”
The room was stifling. All attention was fixed upon Ian. Feeling a sudden affinity with the gravy-smothered chicken leg congealing on his plate, he replied, “At the time, life on the frontier presented less by way of . . . complications.”
“Among the Indians?” Judith blurted. “I wouldn’t have supposed so.”
Ian silently thanked her for the redirection. “D’ye know of our neighbors to the west, then?”
“I’ve read Mr. Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina.”
“Have ye?” Ian said, surprised into interest.
Rosalyn cut in before he could pursue it further. “Why talk of tiresome books when here sits our cousin, who’s actually lived among the red men?”
Ian couldn’t help returning her admiring smile. “Aye, Rosalyn, I’ve stories I could tell.” Noting her sister’s crestfallen countenance, he added judiciously, “But I’m also a bookbinder’s son. Tiresome isn’t the word I’d use to describe books.”
That had both sisters beaming at him.
They talked for a while of Robert Cameron’s shop in Boston’s North End; then the conversation flowed on to Ian’s elder brother, Ned, who worked alongside their father, and whose second son had been born that winter past. But at the first opportunity, Ian turned back to Judith, silent since her sister’s mild rebuke.
“I’m familiar with Lawson’s survey. I understand many of the tribes he met with are regrettably vanished now. Or exiled from Carolina, like the Tuscaroras.”
His uncle’s wife had thus far taken small part in the conversation, but now Lucinda Cameron interjected, “I, for one, do not deem the absence of red heathens in our kitchen-yard cause for regret. Do let us not revive the subject.”
Judith drew her napkin into her lap. “But, Mama, we do have—”
“Judith.”
“I beg your pardon, Aunt,” Ian hurried to say. “My years in the wilds have undoubtedly roughened my edges and provided me many a topic of conversation unsuited to the table.”
Rosalyn’s delighted laughter broke the tension. “I daresay we shall make polishing your rough edges our mission, Cousin. To commence our campaign, might you be willing to escort us to meeting?”
“We wish to show you off to our particular friends, the Pryces, who—” Judith bit off her words, silenced by her sister’s quelling stare.
Ian swiped a napkin over his mouth to hide a grin. The lass had apparently committed the unpardonable sin of unveiling their feminine machinations. “Meeting?” he inquired.
“Since leaving Virginia for the back of beyond,” Lucinda explained, “my daughters and I have had no proper Anglican service to attend. However, we are lately privileged to have secured the offices of a visiting minister, one Sabbath in the month.”
“Which happens to fall Sunday next.” Rosalyn leaned toward her sister, adding sotto voce, “We must unearth our Book of Common Prayer, lest our cousin think us perfect heathens.”
Judith frowned. “But I read from it just this morning. It’s—”
With a delicate sigh, Rosalyn straightened. “Really, Judith. I was jesting.”
“Daughters,” Uncle Hugh said, “’tis all well for ye and your mother, this new meeting and its minister. But Ian willna have been raised Anglican, ye ken.”
“True, Uncle. Da went over to the Congregationalists years ago and hasn’t looked back. But I’ve no objection to my cousins’ plan.” Ian forbore mentioning how long it had been since he’d set foot inside a meetinghouse of any persuasion. He hoped his attendance after such a prodigal stint wouldn’t offend the Almighty. His lack of attendance was sure to offend his kin. At least the womenfolk.
“Young Mr. Pryce of Chesterfield Plantation has procured the minister, a Reverend Wilkes,” Lucinda was saying. “He’s distantly related to the Pryces, also formerly of Virginia.”
Was it the subject of religion or Virginia that had sparked his aunt’s volubility? Twice she’d uttered the name of the state, imbuing it with loving import. Ian recalled that her first husband, an old acquaintance of his uncle, had been a Tidewater planter in the state.
Rosalyn took a sip from her glass, held it aloft for the maid to fill, and said, “It’s a shame Papa Hugh isn’t a Quaker.”
“Rosalyn, such a thing to say,” said her mother. “A Quaker?”
Rosalyn’s silvery laughter met her mother’s half-amused, half-shocked expression. To Ian she said, “We’ve little to do with Quakers, of course, save for when we take our corn to mill. Such peculiar folk—I hear they simply sit in silence at their Meetings. But they do swarm like bees in these parts. There must be three of their meetinghouses within a day’s ride of our door.”
“Thomas and I met with a Quaker on our journey,” Ian said, again entranced by her lovely smile. “Traveled with him, in fact, as far as Hillsborough.”
“Ye came by way of Hillsborough?” Uncle Hugh leaned forward, putting aside his napkin. “I’d assumed ye’d passed through Salem.”
“I’d planned to, sir. But Hillsborough was where the Quaker was bound.” He was regretting having mentioned the man—another topic better left alone. After all, it was largely the Quaker’s fault that Ian hadn’t sent Thomas Ross straight back to Boston with his tail between his legs, when he’d last had the chance. He shrugged against the confines of his coat, casting for an explanation that wouldn’t reveal too much. “The man requested our company on the road. He was traveling alone, and as I owed him something of a debt by then—”
“Not a gambling debt?” Rosalyn asked in feigned astonishment.
“I don’t think Quakers gamble,” Judith said.
Rosalyn threw Ian a wide-eyed appeal. “Am I the only one at this table with a sense of humor?”
“I’m sure your sister’s sensibilities do her credit,” Ian said. Even if she doesn’t share your wit, he allowed his eyes to add. “It wasn’t to do with gambling, no. Still, it’s not the tale to place me in the most flattering of lights, I fear.” He paused, hoping Lucinda would again object to their conversation, but the lady remained unhelpfully silent.
“Dinna press your cousin, lass,” his uncle admonished. “He may no’ wish to speak of it.”
“Then he shouldn’t have let fall such an intrigue.” Rosalyn flashed her dimple. “Do be a gentleman, Cousin, and tell us everything.”
Ian’s mind spun at the notion. He couldn’t tell the half of it. What he did tell, as far as it went, was the truth—that he’d taken a fall in Pennsylvania, landed on his head, and knocked himself senseless, letting them believe it had been from the saddle he’d fallen, not the steep hillside where he’d been attempting to ambush the friend who would not stop trailing him south. He told of waking, bruised and battered, in a camp he’d no memory of pitching.