“And he’s always hungry,” Adam finished. “Lorena—she looked like she was going to faint when Hannah told her there was a drowned man in the lake. And now the magician and Mr. Brody have gone off on the raft to bring it back.”
“Magistrate,” Lily corrected him, fighting back the urge to laugh. “It might not be Harper,” she heard herself saying. “A trapper might have got caught in the flood and washed up there.”
Adam’s head bobbed, as if he wanted to believe her but didn’t dare.
“Where’s Nicholas?” Curiosity wanted to know. “And where have your grandma and auntie got to?”
“I’m supposed to tell you,” Adam said. “Auntie Hannah is waiting for the body to come back so she can look at it and Grandma is with Lorena and Nicholas at the Red Dog. Why do they want Auntie Hannah to look at a dead body?”
Lily gestured and he came close enough that she could put an arm around his shoulder. “Doctors look at dead bodies because sometimes by looking they can tell how a person died.”
Adam looked even more distressed. “But dead is dead,” he said. “What difference does it make, how it happens?”
Curiosity made a clicking sound, the one that said she saw trouble coming. To Adam she said, “You know there are bad people in the world.”
Understanding came over Adam’s face. “Do you think the dead man in the lake was killed on purpose?”
“We don’t know that,” Lily said, pulling him closer. “Most likely he just got caught up in the flood.”
“Why would anybody want to kill Harper?” Adam said. He was shaking.
Curiosity said, “Come set here on my lap a bit, little boy.”
He went willingly enough and climbed up to that safe place. Some of Lily’s most vivid and comforting childhood memories had to do with sitting on Curiosity’s lap, and she saw now that Adam was glad to be there.
“You just set,” Curiosity said to him, one hand resting on his back. “You set here with me and when you feel a little better, we’ll have a talk, you and me.”
Lily said, “Hannah won’t need your help?”
“Your sister and mama can handle things just fine without me,” Curiosity said. Her gaze was fixed on Adam. “We got other work right here.”
“I want Mama,” Adam said.
“I know you do,” Curiosity said gently. “But your ma has got to get some rest. When she wake up, we’ll fetch her right down here to sit with us.”
“I feel bad for him,” Adam said. “I don’t understand why his ma would go off and leave him in a strange place. My ma wouldn’t ever leave us like that.”
Lily didn’t think it would be a good idea to get into a discussion of Jemima’s motivations with a nine-year-old boy, but neither could she ignore the real concern he was showing.
“Does Nicholas talk about his ma very much?”
Adam’s mouth worked for a moment, and then he shook his head. “He never does. Not once. It don’t seem right.”
“Sometimes when people are very angry they tuck it all away and never let on,” Lily said. “In my experience, that only makes things worse.”
“I don’t think Nicholas is mad,” Adam said thoughtfully. “He likes it here better than anywhere else he ever lived, he told me that. And he likes Lorena and Harper—” He broke off to clear his throat.
“Let’s not borrow trouble,” Curiosity said.
Adam pressed his mouth together and nodded. He blinked once and then twice, like a much younger child in need of a nap.
Curiosity shook her head gently at Lily.
Such a beautiful, perfectly made child and with such fragile sensibilities. It was hard for someone so young to see things so clearly. To understand and not understand all at once.
Lily closed her eyes and tried to see her own child at nine years old. A boy or a girl, long-legged, skin browned by the sun. A child who was free to run and explore, as she had been, as Adam and all the others were.
She had the sense that this would be her only baby, a thought that would have filled her with sorrow a few months ago. But here in Paradise it wasn’t as hard to think about. There was no lack of family or playmates here.
And just that simply Lily realized that she had come home to Paradise for good. There was nowhere else in the world she would ever be able to raise a child as she meant to raise this one.
51
Hannah’s strict instructions were that Daniel was to rest for a full hour after the treatment.
“Alone.” Hannah’s tone was pointed, but she was smiling too.
On the porch Martha said, “What is the most we could hope for?”
The question clearly surprised Hannah. After a moment she said, “He will never have full use of his arm, but if we are lucky the pain will be more manageable.”
“Isn’t it better now than it used to be?”
Birdie had gone off to play with Hopper, but Hannah still looked around herself to be sure they couldn’t be overheard.
“Yes,” she said. “It is better. Every year it is a little better, though it can flare up now and then, if he’s not careful. You’ll know when it does because he will go to ground. Daniel doesn’t want anyone nearby when that happens, even those who could do him some good.”
“Including me,” Martha said. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Yes.” Hannah looked away over the strawberry fields. She said, “His spirits seem high.”
Martha coughed a laugh. “I should say so. He’s a terrible tease.”
Hannah smiled openly. “I’m glad to hear it. For his sake and yours too. You are blushing, but what I mean to say is that you are good for him. Better than any treatment any doctor might suggest.”
“I’m not so sure I deserve such praise. I have been—unreasonable at times.”
At that Hannah laughed. “I never said you were a saint. That’s not what Daniel needs, anyway.”
Martha might have asked the logical question: What does Daniel need? But it was not for Hannah to answer. She was still thinking about this when her good-sisters had gone.
After waving them off she went to walk through the fields with no intention but to think.
The little stream that separated the strawberry fields from the woods meandered its way downhill, and Martha walked along it until she was out of sight of the house.
She had a favorite spot where the stream was broad and just a few feet deep, surrounded by high grasses and wildflowers and a great tumble of rocks. Martha spent a few minutes picking flowers until she had a handful of bluebells, pussytoes, foamflowers, phlox, and long grasses. Then she sat down on the broadest, flattest rock and began to weave a fairy crown.
She was concentrating so hard that it took a moment to realize that she was being watched. A red fox stood at the edge of the woods, its bright eyes fixed on her. She blinked, and it was gone.
As girls she and Callie had sometimes argued about Martha’s love of fairy crowns. Callie thought them a waste of time and always balked, but in the end she would give in. They would unplait their hair and settle the ring of flowers on their heads to play enchanted princess or bride.
Now they were both married, and Martha had lost the talent for cheering Callie up. Callie, who once had been sharp-tongued and witty and great fun. The events of the last weeks had taken that out of her, and Martha felt it as a real loss.
It was very hot in the sun, and so after a short debate with herself, Martha stripped down to bathe in the stream. The water, ice cold, made her draw in a sharp breath. In a moment she let it go again and settled in to wash. She had no soap with her, but she was glad of the cold water and the warm sun.
I am very fortunate in my husband. She whispered those words to herself every day. Today, somehow, she had forgot that basic truth.
Martha made a promise to herself. When she next saw Daniel, she would tell him the things she had wanted him to see for himself.
Now she climbed out of the stream and onto the flat surface of the ro
ck, to lie in the sun and fall into an immediate sleep.
When Martha had been gone far longer than he liked, Daniel went out to look for her. It wasn’t difficult to trace her trail across the fields, but he was in no hurry. The last thing he wanted to do was to startle her. In fact, he was going to find her in order to make peace between them. It had occurred to him, lying on the table while his sister placed her needles in spots along his spine, that he had been neglecting Martha. It hadn’t been his intention, and in fact he might not have realized it but for Hannah, who waited until Martha was out of the room to point out the obvious.
“You hurt her feelings.”
His first impulse was to deny this charge, but he held back for a moment and tried to make sense of it.
“And how do I fix that, when I don’t even know what I did?”
Hannah was smiling; he could feel it. She said, “It doesn’t matter what you did, not really. She’s new to this business, Daniel.”
“It’s not like I’ve ever been married before,” he said.
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
And he did know. Martha had come to him a virgin, unsure but willing. Insecure about the things they did and how they made her feel. He had responded with playfulness, and it seemed now that maybe that had not been enough.
“So how do I fix things?”
“My guess is that all she needs is a little wooing.”
For the hour he had been ordered to rest, Daniel had contemplated his sister’s advice, and then he set out to see if he could meet the challenge.
He knew where she was, because he liked the spot on the stream as much as she did. Daniel scanned the shadowed woods, the rocks, the water itself, and then he saw a flutter of color rise and fall in the wind.
Martha’s hair. She had loosed her hair, and threaded flowers through it.
The images came hard and fast: Martha’s pale shoulders breaking through the river of color, the feel of it sliding across his skin.
Now she slept in the sun, half turned on one side with one long leg crossed behind the other. She wore only her chemise, of fabic so fine that he could see the very color of her skin.
He called her name and she woke with a start. Daniel took in her breasts under the damp cotton, paper white and perfectly round, the shadow between her legs, and then more movement in the shadows, just behind her.
One part of his mind recognized that movement for what it was before he could put a name to it. Martha hadn’t seen it, but from the expression on her face he knew she had heard the rattle. She froze, her eyes huge and round and fixed on him.
It all happened at once: Daniel’s hand found the knife’s hilt of its own accord, and his arm came up and over in an arc, even as the rattler’s sleek head rose; the flash of sunlight on the blade as it flew, rotating once, twice, three times before it met the sinuous neck and severed head from body.
Then he was running those last few steps. He grabbed her up and held her away from the carcass, felt the flow of her rasping breath on his face.
“It’s dead,” she said. Not a question, but an assurance. “It’s dead.”
Gently Daniel set her aside clear of the rock, and went forward to look more closely. It was a good-sized timber rattler, but its bite would probably not have killed her, though it could have cost her a foot or hand. Daniel flung the head into the brush, picked up the body and did the same.
He retrieved his knife and wiped it on the grass. Martha said, “I could have made a stew out of that.”
Daniel took in her loosened hair, the crown of flowers, and the brimming tears that she was holding back with such effort. She was trembling.
He pulled her up against him and put his mouth on her brow.
“You will joke at the strangest times.” His voice came hoarse, and he realized he was shaking himself.
She raised her face to his to say something and he kissed her.
Martha in his bed had been a revelation. It was a delight and a surprise to watch her take in the unexpected, to see how she argued with herself about letting go and how hard she fell when she did. Little by little she had been growing more confident and courageous, and then had come the interruption that meant he had not yet got a child on her.
He said, “I missed you.” She nodded and pulled his face to hers, answering a question he didn’t know how to ask. She wanted this; she had missed him too, and he wouldn’t have to start wooing her from the very beginning. Now she clung to him with such fierce purpose, her desire so unmistakeable that he might have laughed for satisfaction and joy.
He went down on his knees in the grass and she went with him. For the first time, she put one hand on the front of his breeks. The brush of her fingers was almost more than he could bear; he caught her hand and slipped it inside the flap.
Her fingers moved gently and then circled, taking his measure. He might have said something, but talk required breathing and there was very little air in the world at that moment.
She said, “The infamous cucumber,” and he found he could laugh, after all.
He pulled her chemise off over her head and tossed it aside. Face-to-face in the bright sunshine her whole body seemed to glow. Her nipples, as pale and firm as berries just starting to ripen; the sheen of sweat at the base of her throat; the cascade of hair that fell from the circlet of grass and flowers to the ground. He touched her as she had touched him and she put her head back and gasped. Then she righted herself and put her hands on his face.
She said, “Why are you still dressed?”
It was as if her hands had been tied, and were now, suddenly, free. She touched him everywhere as he peeled off his breeks. He began to undo his shirt but she struck his hand away and pushed him, both hands on his chest, until he was sitting in front of her in the high grass, heels on the ground and knees raised. She paused, uncertain.
He didn’t have the patience to talk her through what she clearly wanted to try, so Daniel pulled her onto his lap, levered her up, and then, with exquisite slowness, down. Flesh parted and gave way so that she caught him up, inch by inch, in wet heat that might have robbed him of his senses. That would have robbed him of his senses, if not for his need to watch her face as he opened her and filled her.
When he was fully seated, when they could be joined no further, he kissed her softly and pulled her tighter to him, his hand spread on the small of her back.
“I wondered,” she said, breathless, her hips moving in response to the pressure of his hand. “I wondered if this would work.”
“Of course it will, darlin’,” he said, his mouth at her ear. “And the next time you get to wondering, I hope you’ll just come on out and say so.”
52
That evening Martha and Daniel ate a simple meal and went about the usual chores, talking easily about the week to come, the end of the school year, about Nicholas Wilde and Callie and what would come next. Callie was still determined to take the boy in.
“I don’t see how I can stop her,” Martha said.
Daniel was thoughtful, his gaze fixed in the distance. Then he turned to her, his expression grim.
“What are you worried about, exactly? What’s the worst that could happen?”
It was an excellent question, one she had asked herself repeatedly. She said, “If it turns out that the boy is some kind of imposter, I don’t know how Callie will react.”
“That’s the worst?”
Martha shook her head. “The worst is that Jemima is scheming to try to get the farm and orchard away from her, and using the boy to do it. But why? Why would Jemima with her fancy coach and rich husband want what’s left of the orchard?”
Daniel put back his head and drew in a deep breath. “You know the answer to that as well as I do. Jemima wants. That’s her nature. Doesn’t have to be any reason or logic to it.”
When the dishes were wiped and put away and the chores done, Daniel pulled out the tin bath while Martha put water to heat.
She needed this
bath. Her whole body felt tender, like a piece of paper that had been folded and refolded so many times that it had gone soft with handling. Maybe a bath would help her sort things through, because there was a war going on. Her mind told her that she should be satisfied and sated and in need of nothing more than a good night’s sleep, but there was a tingling itch between her legs that would not be ignored.
When the water was heated she climbed in and leaned back, her whole body relaxing with pleasure. Nerves jumped in the places she was most tender—she saw now she had a rash on her breasts and shoulders, all from Daniel’s beard stubble. She slipped farther into the water and sighed with contentment.
Daniel pulled up a stool so he could sit next to her. For a long moment he just watched as she began to wash.
“Your mind is very far away,” she said, a little put out that he was so uninterested in the sight of her in the bath.
He said, “Is it? I wanted to say something. Now that the books are all organized—” He cleared his throat. “I thought maybe we could read aloud now and then in the evening.”
Martha closed her eyes and did her best to keep her tone even, but there was a breathless quality to it. “What a good idea.”
“Well, then,” Daniel said. “I’ll just open this book up and see where we land.”
There was a riffling of pages and a long pause that drew out and out and brought Martha to the edge of reason.
“This is one of my favorite passages,” Daniel said, and he began.
“‘The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the assessments according to the number and natures of the favours they have received; for which they are allowed to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness were likewise proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by every person’s giving his own word for the quantum of what he possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom and learning, they should not be taxed at all, because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour, or value them in himself.’”