“Of course,” she murmured, although she had no idea what that meant. She was too enchanted with the kitten that curled up against her chest.
“Your good mousers will have large ears,” Carl explained. “Helps them hear the mice. Now here’s what you do. Put them both in the house. Slick Tom knows what to do, and by the time he’s got all the mice out, this little gray will have learned from him. Bring him back, and you can keep the girl.”
Silas helped her into the wagon and handed her Slick Tom. Immediately the oversized cat curled up into a ball on her lap while the kitten chewed on the button of her coat.
Two cats on her lap, and Silas at her side. Life was lovely.
❧
Silas opened the door of Birdbath House. Twilight had crept early across the land, and the hard chill of the night was settling in.
“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” he called, feeling like an idiot. But one couldn’t exactly talk to a cat like one would to, say, a business associate. He tried it. “Good evening, Mr. Slick Tom and Miss, I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name earlier. Has the day been profitable?”
He lit the lamp that was on the table, and a circle of light illuminated the room. “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.”
The day’s catch was laid out in a tidy line with the two cats, the big yellow one and the little gray one, sitting proudly beside the row. He patted each cat awkwardly on the head, told them each what good hunters they were, and left them to their spoils. He’d check the next day to make sure the harvest was taken care of before bringing Eliza over.
Eliza. How easily—and how completely—she had moved into his life. She was a complication he never foresaw, despite Professor Barkley’s warnings about being prepared for the unexpected.
What would he have done if he had known she was coming into his life? What if he had been able to expect the unexpected?
He shook his head. Much more thinking like this, and he’d be as loony as his uncle.
Love was what it was. There was no use complicating it by trying to figure out the how or the why. Just the who was enough.
Suddenly Slick Tom sailed through the air and pounced on something. As the cat came back, the prize dangling in his mouth, Silas decided he’d continue this train of thought in the safety of his own rodent-free home.
Until Slick Tom finished the job here, Silas knew he wouldn’t be lingering at Birdbath House.
❧
Eliza watched Silas as he read. They were waiting for Hyacinth and Edward to return from a short walk. Edward rarely used the cane, and soon he wouldn’t need it at all.
Silas had picked up a treatise on the properties of knowledge. It seemed too thin to cover the topic at all well, but she kept that to herself.
He’d offered her a newspaper, or another book, but she refused. What she needed to say would make concentration impossible.
“Silas,” she said, twisting in the seat uncomfortably, “I need to talk to you.” She clenched her fingers around the arms of the chair, not to keep her on the slippery cushion but to keep her from fleeing the house.
He raised his head from his book and slowly focused on her. She’d come to anticipate that expression with delight. He had the ability to completely immerse himself in whatever he read, and he moved so slowly into the world of reality.
“Yes?” He took his wire-rimmed glasses off.
“I have to—” She stopped. “I must— I need to—”
He smiled slightly. “Then by all means, you should.”
“When I was in St. Paul, I knew Blaine Loring.” The words sprang out.
“Blaine Loring?” He put his glasses back on, as if they helped him understand her better. “The name is somewhat familiar, but I can’t place it right now.”
God, help me, please. Obviously she’d need some divine help if she were to tell him the whole sordid story.
She squeezed the arms of the chair even tighter. “He’s the man that Edward read about from the paper. He took money from young women in St. Paul, claiming he was going to invest it for them, when in fact, he didn’t.”
Silas’s brow wrinkled with concern. “Oh, Eliza, he took advantage of you, too? I was afraid of that.”
“Well, yes.” This was not getting any easier.
“How much did you lose?”
She lowered her head. “I didn’t lose any money,” she whispered at last, the hand of guilt wrapped firmly around her heart.
“I don’t understand.”
Eliza swallowed hard. There was nothing to do at this stage but to barrel on through. “I thought Blaine and I were in love. He could charm the wool off a sheep.”
“The wool off a sheep?” he asked blankly.
“It’s a phrase my father used to describe someone who could talk people out of whatever he wanted. That was Blaine Loring. His ‘love’ for me was only a cover.”
Silas’s lips thinned to a hard line. “Are you telling me that Loring took liberties with you? That he abused your innocence?”
Eliza’s face flushed even hotter. “No! Not that! I mean that he saw in me someone who could help him with his snake oil plan. He made me think that he loved me, and I was so gullible that I believed him.”
“Eliza,” Silas said, leaning closer, “we should thank God that you weren’t prey to his swindle. I’m sure that you weren’t the only one he charmed.”
“Probably. But I might be the only one who helped him with his con game.” She put her head in her hands.
“You helped him? How?” Disbelief rang in his voice.
She wanted to get up, to run from this house, to leave Remembrance. This had been a terrible, terrible idea.
“I was the go-between. I convinced the other women in service to the wealthy families in St. Paul to give their money to him. He had a plan, he said, that would let them double, triple, maybe quadruple what they’d given him.”
“How much money—how many of these women are we talking about?”
Eliza blinked back the tears that stung her eyes. “I don’t know how much money. How many women did I bring to this? Twenty-five, maybe thirty.”
She didn’t want to revive the memory of how she’d taken advantage of these women for him, how she sacrificed their friendships. He changed her enough that she stopped seeing them as friends. Instead, they’d all become investors. That made him happy—and she recreated her life just to keep him happy.
“What did you tell them?” he asked stiffly. “Did you tell them that investments aren’t sure things?”
“No. I told them there was no risk at all. That’s what he told me, and that’s what I told them.” Her stomach twisted. “How could I have been so foolish?”
“And what did he promise you? Some of the money? A cut of the profits?”
“No! I did it because I thought we’d be together. I did it because I thought I loved him. I did it because I thought he loved me.” Her voice caught in a sob.
Silas was silent. The ticking of the clock on the mantel was the only sound.
“Do you see what I’ve done?” she asked him, the words ragged as she tried to talk around the pain. “I helped him. I did. And—God forgive me—I hurt my friends. And what do I have left? Only guilt.”
Her fingers gripped the arms of the chair. “I don’t know much about the law, but I suspect that what he did was illegal. Silas, do you see? I helped him. I helped him! That makes me an accomplice.”
He stared past her, his face a stony mask.
“Say something,” she begged.
He stood up and turned to leave the room.
“Please. You must say something.” She knew she was pleading, but it meant so much to her. “Say you hate me. Say I disgust you. Say—please say you forgive me.”
He stopped. When he spoke, he was still facing the door, not her. “I don’t hate you. I don’t find you disgusting. I have one question for you, though.”
“What is it?”
“If you believed him, if you thought what you offer
ed your friends was a true investment, why didn’t you invest in it, too?”
Her breath froze in her chest. Why, indeed, hadn’t she? The answer was too horrible to consider.
He left the room. She was left alone by the fireplace, but she was colder than she could ever have imagined. Even the flames burning behind the hearth couldn’t warm the iciness that had enclosed her heart with his final words.
She stood up, got her wrap from the coat tree by the front door, and let herself out. The sun was shining brightly, and the winter birds were singing, but she was only vaguely aware of them.
When she’d come to Remembrance, she’d run away from everything associated with Blaine Loring—or so she thought. But she hadn’t been able to escape the stain that was on her soul.
She needed somebody to forgive her. Silas? God? Herself?
❧
“So I’ve got my eye on the ruby ring I saw advertised in the Duluth paper,” Edward said at the dinner table. “I think Hyacinth would like it, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Silas shoved the piece of potato through the gravy on his plate until it came apart.
“I’d like to go to Duluth fairly soon to look at it. Would you like to go?”
“Yes.” A green bean began to make the same trip through the gravy.
“Good. And we’ll look into getting a panda as a pet and riding grasshoppers onto the moon.”
“That would be fine.”
“Silas, would you pay attention? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Edward frowned at his nephew.
“I heard,” Silas protested. “A ring, Duluth, and—oh, I don’t know. Sorry, I wasn’t focusing.”
“What’s wrong? You’ve been in a slump all evening.”
Silas shoved his plate away. The dinner was undoubtedly tasty, but it all sat like dry cardboard in his mouth. “Guess I’m not hungry.”
“Guess you’re in love.”
“In love? With whom?” Silas glared at his uncle. Truly he had lost his mind. Eliza was—well, she was Eliza.
His uncle smiled. “I’d say that Eliza Davis has done a job on your heart.”
Silas snorted. “You are mistaken. Eliza has done nothing to my heart, nothing at all.”
“Love doesn’t have to be this painful experience you’re making it out to be. Let yourself enjoy it.”
“The way you are?” Silas snapped. “You and Hyacinth? Are you insane?”
Uncle Edward nodded happily. “Yes, indeed. Insane with love.”
“I don’t believe you’re saying this.” Silas pushed his chair away from the table so furiously that it fell over. “Just because you and Hyacinth act like a couple of moonstruck youngsters doesn’t mean that everyone has to be in love. I’m not in love with Eliza. Not at all.”
He slammed his napkin onto the table and stalked out of the dining room.
In love with Eliza. What an inane thing to say. How could he love someone who had participated in such a blackguardly deal as she did, bilking young women out of their savings? Here he’d thought she was innocent, when in fact she was completely the opposite.
He went up to his bedroom, the only place in the house where he was guaranteed a modicum of privacy.
In love with Eliza. Humph.
Some time with the Word might settle his spirit. He sat at his table and opened his Bible, and as he did so, a piece of blue paper fluttered to the ground.
It was the list. What a silly piece of business that had been. He was such a fool to have been taken in by her.
Had it been just yesterday that he’d written it? He couldn’t stop himself from unfolding the list and rereading it.
Why did you leave St. Paul? He didn’t need to ask that question anymore. He had the answer.
Why did you come back to Remembrance? He could figure that one out on his own. She was running, trying to escape the proverbial long arm of the law.
Do you intend to stay in Remembrance? Why? Again, that had become quite clear. Remembrance was a tiny dot on a map. No one would think to look for her here.
What makes you happiest? What has made you cry? What do you need? He didn’t even want to know the answers to these questions, but they answered themselves anyway. Swindling people made her happy. Getting caught made her cry. She needed someone to hide her.
Then there was the question he hadn’t written on the paper, only in his mind. Do you like me?
He buried his face in his hands.
Why had God done this to him? Why had God let him fall in love with a criminal?
His pulse hammered in his temples. No, no, no.
He had just admitted it to himself. He was in love with her. Despite the litany of reasons he shouldn’t love her, he did. It made the pain that much worse.
Darkness washed into his room, and still he sat at the table, stricken by the realization—and the nasty corollary that came with it. He loved her, and he couldn’t. He could not love someone who was as morally flawed as she was.
So this was what heartache was, he thought almost detachedly. No wonder the poets wrote of it and the musicians sang of it.
What was he to do? Professor Barkley hadn’t dealt with this, but he also repeatedly warned against the knotty experience of love. There was no point in consulting the Five Year Plan to see what counsel the professor would give.
He opened his Bible and found the comfort verse of the Lord’s Prayer in the book of Matthew. The triumph of the last lines, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, never failed to elevate his mood. That was the promise of the prayer.
With a start, he noticed the two verses that follow the Lord’s Prayer: For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
How could he have missed the lines before? It was as if God was speaking directly to him, pointing out the divinity of forgiveness, and the necessity of the act of forgiveness.
He had refused to forgive Eliza. Clearly he was wrong. He recalled the words of the sermon Reverend Tupper had preached. Forgiveness was the first step to renewing the relationship between God and himself, to restore the bond of Creator and creation. Now it was his turn to work on his own “clean heart.”
And it was time to start learning how to love.
Nine
“We’re all going to the Robbins’s house today,” Hyacinth announced the next morning at breakfast. “Eliza, dear, are you sure you’re not sick? Your eyes are bloodshot.”
“I’ll be fine. I can’t guarantee how straight my seams will be, though.” Eliza manufactured a smile. The last thing she wanted to do was to be around Silas, but Analia’s striped dress was so close to being done that she could probably finish it today.
She had no choice. She had to go.
Actually it was probably not going to be a problem anyway. The way Silas had walked from her, oozing disapproval, meant that he probably would manage to stay as far away from her as he could.
“We’re meeting at Edward and Silas’s house,” Hyacinth continued. “Edward wants to show me something.” She leaned over and in a conspiratorial whisper said, “I think it’s a ring.”
Eliza mustered up all the enthusiasm she could. Even if her life had fallen into shreds, she needed to be upbeat about her friend’s romance. “Did he get it? What does it look like?”
“I don’t think he has it yet. We’ll see when we get over there.”
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. The silent words echoed through Eliza’s mind as she and Hyacinth walked over to the Collier house.
Edward sat by the window, his ever-present Duluth newspaper in his hands, but this time it was folded open to a particular page. “Hyacinth, my morning flower!”
Silas looked at the ceiling and rolled his eyes as he mouthed, My morning flower?
Edward was showing Hyacinth an advertisement in the paper. “Do you like
it?” he asked, and in response got a loud kiss from her. He winked at Eliza. “I guess she does!”
Hyacinth danced over to Eliza and held the paper out. “Look at this ring! Isn’t it beautiful? It’s to be my wedding ring!”
It was indeed a lovely ring, but Eliza’s eyes were riveted on the story beside the advertisement. It was a short news story, stating simply that without further evidence, the case against Blaine Loring would be dropped.
Had Silas seen it? She must know.
“Let’s leave the lovebirds alone for a moment,” she suggested to him. “I’d like some tea before we go to the Robbins house.”
“Of course.” Silas looked confused but followed her into the kitchen.
“Did you read the paper?” she asked without preamble as he put some water on to boil.
“My uncle showed me the advertisement for the ring if that’s what you mean. Why, do you think that she really won’t like it?”
Eliza shook her head vigorously. “Not the ring. It’s beautiful, and she’ll wear it proudly. No, I mean the story next to it.”
“I guess I was too busy watching Uncle Edward extol the virtues of the ring. Why?”
“The case against Blaine is going to be dropped for lack of evidence.”
He froze. “That would be a good thing for you,” he said, overly polite. “It lets you off.”
“No, it’s not a good thing for anyone. I wasn’t part of this, not knowingly at any rate. You have to believe me. I want him to go to jail for what he did. If he isn’t prosecuted, he’ll do it again.”
He had to believe her, had to understand what happened. He had no idea the pain she was in, how it was eating at her.
“So what do you intend to do about it?” He measured tea into a strainer and laid it over a cup.
“What can I do?” She clutched his arm. “Really, Silas, what can I do?”
“You could provide a statement.”
She shook her head. “I’ve already thought of that, but it won’t work. St. Paul isn’t like Remembrance. No one is going to believe me. I’m just the voice of a young workingwoman, one who has been spurned, no less. Do you think my testimony would carry any weight?”
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