He wasn’t at all certain Beth would like what he was bringing home.
Chapter Sixteen
Harmon and Harmony Knowles possessed the natural curiosity of five-year-olds everywhere, and their parents’ narrow-mindedness had not yet squeezed out of the twins the heartsight that let them still see fairies. The smallest residents of The Oaks gave their Protestant mother fits, and when Lucy lost her temper and bared their bottoms and switched them ‘til they bled, Beth could stand no more.
With the Captain gone and no overseer here with the authority to protect the twins from their mother, Beth entered the woods and talked to the oaks, who talked to Herne, who agreed to support whatever she decided to do. She returned to the big house and listened to the fiddle play and Philip sing and Sophie yodel her little fox tune. Upstairs, she sat cross-legged on the bed where her own child was likely conceived, and she prayed and listened and prayed some more. And the solution to the problem, while not ideal, was the best of the choices at hand.
The twins’ parents were who they were, and the children needed to better fit into their family. Physically, the little wild strawberry blondes with their sapphire eyes and adorable dimpled cheeks fit in the color palette of their family, but Harmon and Harmony loved to laugh and chase fairy wings and thought it quite natural to know each other’s thoughts and finish each other’s sentences. As long as Lucy’s wild strawberries had heartsight, they’d continue to break the molds she insisted on forcing them into. They would forever earn both parents’ enmity, but Beth would not put it past their mean-spirited mother to hurt them, really hurt them.
And so it was, for their own good, that Beth decided to blind them.
Not physically, of course, and not to everything spiritual. They would still be able to see heavenly angels, should angels choose to attend them. And Jesus, if that was to be believed. She planned to weave a protection spell that would blind them to anything spiritual beyond the good in their family’s faith. No more fairies, no more bogies in the dark, no more Herne.
Beth mourned the loss of anyone’s fairy sight. An open heart that loves unconditionally will always see more than a heart closed by fear. Babies were born with heartsight, smiling in their sleep, laughing at unseen things beyond an adult’s range of comprehension. If a parent was open to it, it might just stick, but people with insufficient knowledge, society, and religion served to instill fear and that closed the shutters. By the time they were school age or so, there were fewer and fewer children who could truly see.
When she was done, Harmon and Harmony would be just like everyone else.
Beth told herself that it was for their own good, but it was going to be one of the harder things she’d had to do of late. Knowing what was coming, she decided to have the twins help pick apples in the orchard. Their mother might keep her narrowed eyes on Beth but she would not object to the twins coming because it was labor that needed done and, on a farm, everyone, young to old, worked. Gathering apples would give the twins a last chance to play among the fairies and allow her to get what she needed to work her magick.
As she’d hoped, Lucy Knowles was only too glad to have someone take her wild strawberries off her hands and make them do something useful. Her sons William and Worth had gone to the field with their father, and the two older girls India and Lettice were in the spinning house, helping the industrious Miss Denning. The apples needed gathered, sorted, and cooled. The culls would be used for cider; the best apples would be layered with straw, in barrels and holes, to keep them well into the winter. They’d dry some and, with luck, could sell the rest. Last year a cartload went down the road to go into a neighbor’s beer.
Another thing on her list to do, once she returned the twins to their mother.
Lucy Knowles virtually lived in the kitchen and its gardens, using the pretext of work to escape the marriage and children whom she considered the source of her greatest unhappiness. Which was just as well, since it allowed her children to learn other skills from much more agreeable people, and thus far none of the six showed signs that their mother’s meanness had infested their tender little spirits. When the Knowleses’ marriage had been arranged, Lucy was told to submit to the Biblical authority of her Protestant husband, but George Knowles was an earthy man and she would have preferred it otherwise.
Lucy Knowles hated sex. She resented her husband for wanting it at all, let alone demanding it so often. She seemed to hate anyone’s enjoyment of anything, but then misery loves company. And so it was that the rest of them pitied George for being saddled with a prig who had nothing in common with him beyond religious beliefs and six children and a favorite fruit pie that she baked when she wanted him to leave her alone.
They’d planted more cherries last year.
The trees would take years to mature, but when they did, spring would be even more breathtaking. In no place on the plantation was the changing of the seasons more evident than the orchard. From her cottage on the edge of it, Beth watched the constantly shifting palette from the first blossoms of spring until the last pear of fall. Goats kept the orchard grass cropped until cherry season began in June, when they were herded back into the fold with the fresh-shorn sheep and prancing lambs, otherwise the goats would only have eschewed the grass for sweeter fare. Crops of fruit with successive and overlapping seasons yielded a harvest that stretched from June through October. But beyond the spring blossoms and the cherries and peaches and plums and apples and pears were the hives of bees that made it all possible.
When the pollinating flowers were gone and the days grew shorter and winter’s chill approached, she would mark the hives to save and do her best to see that they survived for the coming year. She’d only lost one winter hive since coming here, when she was learning the Maryland weather and sadly misjudged how cold it would get. They’d had more in the ice house that season, but she’d certainly had to scramble in spring to find more bees.
She collected the twins from their mother and marched the children past the bees to where they would pick up apples, each one armed with a little basket and the promise of reward for a job well done, something they rarely got from Lucy, who meted out punishments far more often than praise. By the time Harmon and Harmony were born, Lucy had no patience left. It didn’t help that a fever had dried up her milk soon after their early arrival, born so small, they shared a little box for months. A wet nurse was found, and Beth suspected that’s why Lucy seemed so detached from them—and why these two were such free spirits compared to the four older Knowles children. Stories and songs heard in the cradle and when put to a breast had to make some difference.
Beth and the twins worked all morning, scavenging the drops and picking the ripe ones she could reach. To spare her back as much as anything, instead of big heaping mounds, they made nappy hillocks among the variety of apple trees that had been the last to bloom in the spring.
She didn’t work the children too hard. Being five years old with heartsight, they would get distracted from time to time and leave their little baskets to chase gossamer wings, but when that had gone on a while, she would herd them back to the task at hand.
Once they’d made enough knobbly piles that no one could argue their industry, Beth took the twins to her cottage for a drink and a short rest. Harmon and Harmony didn’t need a snack. What five-year-old would, after gathering apples? Still, there were little cakes that she’d saved, and while they gobbled those up like greedy chicks, she tousled their wild strawberry hair and made sure that she had red-blonde whispers from both little heads before she bade them finish and the three of them returned to work.
At the end of the day, Beth praised their industry in front of their mother and thanked Lucy sweetly, for raising such good little workers. She pressed a coin into each grubby hand and the children crowed and their mother’s eyes narrowed sharply, in a calculating glint. It was out of her hands (because any wage earned by a child belonged to the parent), but Beth hoped the parents did something nice for the twins before d
onating the rest to the collection plate at church.
With the Captain gone, Beth once more had choice, independent of the wants and needs of another. Not that she minded. Betimes they felt like an old married couple already, and even though he had not yet told her aloud that he loved her, there was a raw honesty about him that she cherished. Most days she knew his views and his mind and could pretty much guess where he would stand on something because of it. And now he was gone with one of his two ships, off to interview overseers and hopefully come back with money enough to last them until Zephyr and Patrick won.
Beth sighed, missing him. She missed his humor, and his sweet naivety where magick was concerned. She smiled, remembering the way he’d looked at her flax wheel and wondered if she could spin straw into gold. Would that she could! It would have certainly have made life easier. The Captain would be here, not forced to hire out his boat and sell his services, and she would be in his bed, drawing patterns on his chest over his heart or marveling at the closeness of his second shave. Left to her own devices, she returned to the cottage, the true work began.
Beth thought of what she would need when it came time to weave the protection spell, and what form it should take. She’d never made a poppet quite like it, but she decided to craft a two-faced doll, a boy on one side and a girl on the other, and put hair inside it that she collected from the twins. Unfortunately, she had underestimated how hard it would be to find the red gold whispers that had drifted to the floor and soon found herself stretched out on the wide pine boards. Rolling slightly to the side so as to not lie on her unborn child, she started sweeping with her fingers, gathering them until she was certain that she had each precious strand.
Beth sat in her orchard cottage with Sophie curled at her feet while she embroidered little sapphire-eyed faces on a square of linen before cutting it, shaping it to human form with each snip of her scissors. When she was all but done stitching the fabric’s paired edges, she blended the strawberry blonde whispers with soft white wool and stuffed the poppet, then finished the last inch of seam.
Done.
Sophie heard her thought and lifted her head, smiling as foxes can do when they choose. Poor girl, she’d been neglected by her human of late and had spent more and more time with Herne. The seasons were changing, and Sophie and Beth with them. Next spring would likely see them both with young: Sophie with a tumble of red-furred kits, and Beth with the fruit of her and the Captain’s joining.
She knew that this one—the first of several she sensed coming—was a boy, but she wanted the Captain to be surprised. He needed to focus on the here and now, not the potential future that might manifest differently, or later, or not at all. The future, she’d learned, was like that—a nebulous cauldron of possibilities, the sum of experiences, individual and shared, with outcomes influenced each time someone involved stirred the pot. Free will was one thing; understanding how one person’s choice affected another’s could take years of reflection and the wisdom of a sage.
It was late enough when she finished sewing that Beth waited to do the spellwork. The poppet was done, and she was quite pleased with the way she had captured the look of Lucy Knowles’s wild strawberries.
But she couldn’t help wondering if the poppet would look different, once the children had been tamed.
Like Jannet Gordon’s face, once the Captain had visited.
Her mother loved her. She had no doubt, but Jannet Gordon was Roman Catholic to the marrow of her bones and could not begin to fathom any religion beyond her own. She better understood Protestant reformists like Israel Waters and Rebecca Denning and the Knowles family than her daughter, who followed a faith older than either.
Beth knew what was coming. Her mother would want them married in the church, and the priest would require that they first come to confession, and if they were honest, and the priest assigned penance to be completed before he would bestow the sacrament of marriage, they might never be Captain and Mrs. O’Malley.
Poor bairn. It was looking more all the time, they’d have to find a Protestant minister willing to marry them and pay premium for a special license to get the thing done.
Beth slept with the poppet and with Sophie, and sometime during the night she decided that she would weave the protection spell with the harvest moon. It made the most sense, with new moons best for releasing and full moons best for manifesting, and if the charm was going to stick in place the way it needed to, the extra energy boost could only help.
The next day, she picked and sorted more apples and spoke to the bees and avoided her mother, preferring the companionship of a phantom fiddle and Philip’s ghost to the hints and questions that were sure to arise. She was carrying long enough now, she feared that the minute her sprout turned, there’d be no hiding it, and she’d taken to ever wearing work aprons pinned to the fore. With sturdy linsey-woolsey woven by the industrious Miss Denning, she’d made two of them with extra cloth. The shirring below the waist had a fullness designed to do more than please the eye.
At night she lay in the Captain’s bed and held his pillow to her heart and wondered how he fared. He had been successful in part; word had come that a general overseer was hired but would not move into Philip’s old cottage until his current contract was expired in December. She spoke to Philip’s ghost about it, and stressed the need to remain in the Captain’s house, that the new overseer would not understand if he had to share living space and no one needed distracted while they worked.
The ghost pouted a bit, until she had the fiddle play the old English folk tunes that Philip favored. By the time the last phantom note fell silent, she felt that the situation was under control, at least for now.
Meanwhile, down at the stables, surly Sean was getting out of hand, as apt to kick straw in someone’s face or spit at them as not. He was too big to be a jockey, and, with Ralph injured, he hated—hated—that his cousin Patrick was now riding Zephyr, leaving the stablework all to him. Beth could not bring herself to go near Sean, not with the vortex of ill winds that spun off him like a tornado.
She only knew the source of it because, sometimes, oak trees gossiped too.
With the Captain gone, she decided to talk to the Marshall brothers, who were paid to manage the stables. Thomas, with his meaty arms, and Dylan, with his gamey leg, listened as she repeated what she’d heard.
The look on the brothers’ faces was less than encouraging.
She offered a suggestion that might help until the Captain returned. The Marshall brothers agreed. Patrick moved in above the tack room, into the upstairs space Ralph had created but could no longer reach with his bad knee, and Sean went to the barn. Separating the cousins was only temporary; counsel was needed, to be given and heeded, but if Sean wasn’t careful, he was going to find himself indentured to a different master and the Captain would be looking for two more stablehands, not just one.
The moon waxed and the corn ripened and the fall harvest got underway. Sean and the oldest Knowles boy mucked stalls, and Theo rode Attilla while Patrick trained on Zephyr, who chomped at the proverbial bit, as if he sensied the importance of the next race and was anxious for his owner to return so he could show him what he could do.
Beth worked in the orchard and helped Lucy harvest vegetables, which were mostly root crops by this time of year. There were a few late green beans, and the tomatoes were still bearing, but the two women and five youngest children worked to pickle the cucumbers, and cut cabbage for sauerkraut, and brought in sweet potatoes and squashes, carrots and turnips and beets to clean and store.
The day that she worked in the flower and herb gardens, Beth watched the wild strawberry twins chase fairies in the boxwood-lined paths while she helped her mother gather rose hips and bundle the last harvest of mint, which had to be cut before it flowered. This time they would let it go, to lie dormant over winter and return again in spring.
By then she would be married and a mother, counting her baby’s fingers and toes as she counted the days until the
Captain’s return. She felt anticipation growing beyond the energy of the waxing moon, and she knew he would be coming soon.
She didn’t know when he landed on Tuesday, he’d be coming home with a ghost.
Chapter Seventeen
Ian knew he was in trouble the moment he stepped off the Deirdre with a bag full of lucre and a dead Frenchman in tow.
Beth was waiting on the dock, looking like a schoolmaster with a problem child and a twitchy stick. Thinking to charm her, he curved his lips in a smile wide enough to count teeth. “Lass, you are more beautiful than ever.” He winked knowingly and drawled in his best Irish brogue. “I swear, there’s a glow to ye.”
“Well, ye hae got a shade,” she hissed, failing to see any humor in it.
“Now, Beth—”
Her gaze went from the dripping ghost to his bulging poke to the Deirdre, and she literally shook in her silver-buckled shoes.
“Foolish mon,” she whispered, “what hae ye done?”
“I’ve just come from putting enough money in the bank to last us a year, is all. Can you at least say you’re glad to see me? I’ve missed you, Red.”
She said nothing. Instead she pressed her pink lips together and blinked her tear-smacked blue eyes and played that damned trump card. She put her hand over a fullsome apron he’d not seen before and made him feel foolish or henpecked or both.
Tuesday. Just one more Tuesday in the scheme of things. Why should he be surprised?
“Can this wait?” he asked softly. “Please?’ he murmured, aware they were gathering an audience.
She gave a curt nod and spun around on her heel and marched up the landing and back to the big house. He brought the ghost in through the back door, since he wasn’t at all sure how the phantom’s dripping might affect the floors. He’d guessed from the first that Édouard had thrown himself into the brink.
Ride the Wind: Touch the Wind Book Two Page 14