by Sara Donati
“All they want is some quiet time together.”
“And how do you know this?”
She turned onto her side to look at him. “Girls talk to each other.”
“Of course you do. About kissing.”
Martha felt herself coloring but she was determined to hold on to her dignity. “Among other things.”
Now she had his interest.
“Such as?”
Her irritation was about to get the upper hand. She said, “You’re asking me to betray confidences.”
“I’m asking you to confide in me.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow. “Since we seem to have run aground on this topic, I should be able to ask you the same things.”
One brow arched. “What do you want to know?”
“Well,” Martha said slowly. She lay back down and concentrated on the canopy overhead. “Where did you learn all—that. The things you know. I can’t imagine you sitting around with Gabriel and Blue-Jay, talking about such things.”
“Oh, men talk,” Daniel said.
For some reason Martha was irritated by this. “You are saying that you know what you know—you learned what you know—from listening to other men talk about what they do with their wives?”
“Hell no,” Daniel said. “I don’t want to hear what Gabriel gets up to behind closed doors.”
“Well then, where—” she broke off. “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”
There was a long silence. A full minute, by Martha’s reckoning.
Daniel said, “You do want to know. Admit it.”
“Not every curiosity has to be satisfied.”
“Oh, but some do. Some curiosities beg to be satisfied.”
She put her face into the pillow and screamed.
When she came up for air he said, “I’ll tell you, you know. I don’t mind.”
Very calmly, with all the dignity she could muster, Martha said, “Your history is your business alone.”
“In great detail, if you care to hear.”
She glared at him and he raised one brow in response. It made him look disreputable, with his beard stubble and tousled hair. It made her want to slap him, or run away and hide, or laugh. She said, “There is something very unsettling about this side to your personality.”
“I understand,” he said. “But if you’ll let me explain—”
“Daniel!”
He was trying not to laugh. “Don’t ever play at cards, Martha. You’ll go bankrupt in a half hour.”
She said, “Let me be clear. I really don’t want to know about other women you’ve been with.” She thought: in Paradise? here in Johnstown? girls I know? And she bit down hard on her lip.
He was saying, “Why do you assume I’ve been with a lot of women?”
It was a reasonable question. She took a moment to think about it. “It would be better than hearing about one special person.”
He ran a finger down the length of her arm and she jerked. “There isn’t anybody like that. I’m not bound to anybody by affection or habit. I would have told you so.”
Martha let out a breath. “All right then.”
“But that still leaves your curiosity unanswered.”
She threw up her hands. “Go ahead and tell me. I want names and dates and details.”
“That I can’t give you,” Daniel said with mock seriousness. “But I could show you.”
She heard herself draw in a shocked breath. “I have no interest in meeting—whoever it is you’re talking about.”
Daniel rubbed a knuckle along his upper lip.
“I don’t know why you jump to the worst conclusions. There’s nobody to introduce you to. What I know I learned from a book.” And: “Martha, if you could see the look on your face.”
“I don’t believe you,” she stuttered. “I don’t believe such a book exists. Who would write such a thing? Who would read it? Why did you read it? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Do booksellers have such things available for anyone who asks?”
“Not every bookseller, no. I ordered it from a bookshop in London. It’s a novel, but of a particular sort.”
“A novel. Like Miss Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or Mr. Scott’s Ivanhoe, or that novel that your mother dislikes so much, what was it called—”
“The Pioneers. A work of fiction, a novel. Yes. That’s what I mean. Though I am fairly sure my mother has never read Adventures of a French Lady of Leisure.”
He was neither embarrassed nor flustered, and moreover, it was clear he was not going to drop the subject. Nor could she really criticize him for that because she was having a difficult time convincing herself—much less him—that she had no interest in this book of his. If it existed.
He was saying, “It’s about a young Frenchwoman named Marie-Rose de la Force. She is very curious about the world.”
Martha bit her cheek but the question came out anyway. “A Frenchwoman?”
“Oui,” Daniel said, and she heard herself giggle. It was time to take things in hand.
She said, “Don’t tell me any more.”
“As you wish,” Daniel said. “It would be easier to show you, anyway.”
She went still. “You have the book with you?”
“Your enthusiasm makes me cheerful. It bodes well for our marital happiness.”
She pinched him.
“Ow!” He laughed and pulled away. “Of course I don’t have it here. It’s at home. We could read it aloud in the evenings if you like.”
She knew she was sputtering, and she knew too that her outrage was not completely sincere; what she was feeling was more a tingling curiosity. A book. He had read about those things they had done in this very bed in a book. About a French lady.
Better to put it out of her mind.
He had moved closer, and now he whispered in her ear. “It’s a long book,” he said. “It will take us ages to work through it.”
A flush ran up Martha’s body from deep in her belly. Her breasts felt heavy and her nipples had hardened enough to make her chemise peak.
“If you are trying to seduce me,” Martha said, “you’re investing a great deal of effort for a foregone conclusion. And if I may say, I hope I’m at least as interesting as a book.”
“Darlin’,” he said. “You’ve got my undivided attention.”
This time there was something new between them. A playfulness, as rough as puppies but far more serious.
Daniel lifted his head to say, “Do you know what this is called?”
And she batted at him so that he laughed harder and pinned her wrist down, levered himself over her and kissed her breathless.
Oh, she was curious. She had to admit that to herself at least. There were so many questions she might have asked, but Daniel’s touch made them all go away. Once again standing over her, he lifted her up to him with his good hand, and she watched him, every nerve firing, as he fit himself to her and then settled exactly where she needed him to be.
“Oh,” she said. “Ooh là là.”
39
Paradise the rain came down in winding sheets and mist rose up from the ground and hovered over the town, like a lid on a boiling pot, rattling angrily and threatening to fly off. Not even noon, and two storms had already passed through. And more was coming, by the smell of the air.
Birdie tried to block out the conversation behind her, but without luck.
Adam was saying, “They might still be back today. And then school will start tomorrow.”
The little people could hardly wait for school to start. Even John, who was two years shy of being able to go himself. The only one of them who was unhappy about all this was Eliza. Her sister Amelie and her cousins Mariah and Isabel would be going to school, and she would have to stay behind with the babies. Her eyes swam with tears that she tried to blink away. Birdie felt protective of Eliza, who was just a little too young to fit in.
“Not tomorrow,” she said. “New-married people go off together t
o be alone.”
“Ooooh,” said Adam. “Can we go with them?”
“Then they wouldn’t be alone, would they?” Birdie wished she could take back her tone, but it was too late.
“You are grumpy,” said Mariah. “I thought you liked the idea of having Martha as a good-sister.”
“Of course she does,” said Henry, and she threw him a thankful glance.
“Then there’s no call to be so short,” Nathan said. “Especially now that you got your way about splitting the class in two.”
Unless Martha didn’t want to teach, now that she was married. Birdie kept that distressing idea to herself.
“Children!” called Curiosity from the kitchen. “Come on in here now. Food’s on the table.”
Things got a little better then. The little people liked to eat and they liked nothing better than to eat all together at one table. As long as someone was there to fill bowls and cups, they would all settle in and forget their arguments while they worked their way through soup and cornbread and dandelion greens stewed with bacon.
It was a relief, or at least Birdie expected to be relieved by the quiet, but to her own surprise she found she couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself.
To Curiosity she said, “Do you think they’ll be back today?” and all faces turned to her. Even Hannah looked up from spooning gruel into Simon’s open mouth.
“You know I ain’t never been good at telling weather,” Curiosity said. “Now Jennet, she the one can read the sky like a book. You think the rain going to stop anytime soon, Jennet?”
“Och, aye,” Jennet said, handing Isabel a piece of cornbread. “It won’t last the afternoon. But the roads will be a misery and I doubt we’ll see any of them before midday tomorrow.”
“And then school will start,” Adam said firmly.
“We’ll see,” Hannah said. “There are things they’ll need to attend to.”
By which she meant Jemima.
—
Birdie had spent much of Sunday trying to find a way to get a good look at Jemima Southern. She gave up finally and went home, and not an hour later Jemima had come to Uphill House, her husband beside her but no sign of the little boy, who interested Birdie just as much as his mother did.
If she was his mother. There was some debate about that possibility going on in corners in the village. If her ma and da were thinking the same thing, they weren’t talking about it where they might be overheard. She herself was trying to come up with a way to raise the subject to her ma when Jemima arrived.
Birdie thought right away it must be Jemima, because nobody else from Paradise would knock. A visitor opened the door and hallooed, and somebody hallooed back. You could tell who it was by the halloo itself. Birdie considered herself a pretty good mimic of other people’s halloos; she had once got in trouble for making Curiosity think Becca LeBlanc was at her front door.
That hour of Jemima’s visit was hard. First Ma wanted her to take the little people over to Curiosity, something Birdie most sincerely did not want to do but would have to; she had never directly disobeyed her ma, and knew that it would be a bad time to start. Ma was worried about too many things to count, and angry too, and so Birdie had walked with the little people over to Curiosity’s, listening the whole time to Nathan and Henry and Adam talking about the Fochts’ horses. Boys would get caught up in the least important thing, and then they called girls flighty.
Once she had delivered the little people—waving to Curiosity from the distance so as not to get caught up in having to tell everything—she flew back home as fast as she could, coming around the long way through the woods and in by way of the kitchen door so as not to disturb the grown-ups where they stood talking on the front porch.
And that was an odd thing. It meant that Ma hadn’t invited them into the parlor, a breach of what Ma called etiquette that was hard to credit. She gave even the smelliest trapper a better welcome, offered him food and drink and a bath, if he wanted one. Anyone who took the bath was welcome to come eat in the house and otherwise she sent out a plate.
The trappers mostly didn’t take her up on the bath, because they sewed their clothes on for the season and wouldn’t be bothered. But the point, Birdie told herself, was that Ma would let a trapper eat at her table if he was willing to take a bath, and there stood Jemima in fine clothes and Ma wouldn’t let her over the door swell.
Jemima had come to Paradise with her coach and her servants and her trunks of clothes (four of them, Anje LeBlanc had reported, with shiny brass fittings) and she had turned everything upside down and inside out. Not all of that was bad. Daniel and Martha eloping was a very good thing; everybody seemed to be agreed on that much. To Birdie it was exciting and irritating at the same time; she hoped nobody had the idea that since they got married in Johnstown they could just do without a wedding party.
Birdie thought this through while she tiptoed through the hall and up the stairs to her own room, where she could stand at the window and hear every word spoken on the front porch.
It seemed like Jemima was doing all the talking, but if she was mad, she was holding her temper in check. Her voice was even and reasonable-sounding, but when she paused she never got more than a couple of words in reply, and all of them from Da, who was good at getting his point across with nothing but a sharp look.
Now Mr. Focht was talking, a man like a swollen keg ready to burst at the seams. His hair standing out straight and stiff from his ears and nose and eyebrows and even from his knuckles, like porcupine quills. Asking about legal documents and court hearings and other things that Birdie didn’t understand, and could not even remember long enough to write down in her notebook.
Jemima asked better questions. She wanted to know about Callie, where she was living since the flood and how was it that the Bonners took it upon themselves to hide her own stepdaughter from her; could he explain that? Because it didn’t seem right. And there was a rumor in the village that Daniel and Martha had gone off together. Did they have anything to do with that?
“Our Daniel is a man grown,” Da said finally. “We don’t keep him on a leash.”
“I have a right to know where my daughters are,” Jemima said again, her voice a little strained now.
“Of course you do,” Da said. “You’ve always had that right. When you walked off and left them with nothing and no way to fend for themselves, for example. Surely you must remember the day you abandoned those girls you’re wanting to see so bad. Or have I got that wrong?”
“Don’t answer that,” Mr. Focht said.
Birdie would have liked to see her ma’s face. She wanted some idea of how she was taking all this.
“We’ll go, then,” Jemima said stiffly. There was a long pause and she said, “The rumor is that Daniel and Martha have gone to Johnstown to be married. If that’s so—”
“Spare us your threats,” Ma said.
“On the contrary,” Jemima said. “I would be delighted.”
40
“Tell it to me again,” Curiosity said.
They were sitting at Curiosity’s kitchen table over teacups. Elizabeth was weary to the bone but this conversation couldn’t wait, and so here she was.
“She is willing to go to court to force her hand,” Elizabeth said.
Curiosity let out a noisy breath. “I think she should go right ahead. She can stand there in front of God and man and explain herself. I for one would like to hear it.”
Elizabeth finished the last of her milky tea, and then spent a moment studying the dregs on the bottom of her cup. She said, “Curiosity, we haven’t talked about your story.”
She felt the older woman tensing ever so slightly.
“It must have been very difficult for you, I realize that. And I am thankful. Otherwise I would never have known the truth about myself.”
Curiosity’s head snapped toward her. “That story wan’t about you. That story was about me, and what a foolish, vainglorious thing I did. I caused your mama harm and you
r daddy too, and I am truly sorry for it.”
Elizabeth said, “You shouldn’t have withheld the letters, that’s true. But I think the outcome would have been the same.”
“Well,” Curiosity said. “You free to believe what you like. She was your mama, after all.”
She was irritated and ill at ease, and so Elizabeth put two opened letters on the table between them. Yellowed paper, darker along the edges where the pages had been folded for so many years. All the years of Elizabeth’s life.
“No,” Curiosity said. “Sixty years I been looking at those letters and I don’t care to look no more.”
“Nevertheless,” Elizabeth said. “I am leaving them here with you. If you can bring yourself to read them, you may find a way to come to peace with the past.”
The old woman looked up at her and her eyes were wet.
“You think so.” Not so much a question as a challenge.
“I do,” Elizabeth said. “Read them, and decide for yourself.”
“If you want me to know what’s in those letters, then you have got to read them to me. Read them aloud so’s I can hear her voice.”
Elizabeth drew in a deep breath, and then she picked up the first of the letters.
Dear Gabriel,
I write to thee to thank thee for so many things, it is hard to know where to begin. The gifts of fellowship and love thou gave me were then and will always be precious to me. When I was cast down, when I was in danger of never finding my way out of the shadows, it was thee who came to my aid. And I have found my way. Here in England I have a place in my good-sister’s fine home, and work to keep me busy, and Augusta’s friendship.
But the primary source of my joy is our daughter, Elizabeth. If I had thy talent I should draw her likeness, so that thou couldst see what a beautiful, healthy child she is. Already at eight weeks she is so curious about the world, and so dear to me. The Lord has blessed me with a daughter to raise, and I am thankful.
We two are welcome at Oakmere, and this is where we will make our permanent home. It is my intention to never return to the New-York frontier.