by Jody Hedlund
For a moment she watched the corner around which he had disappeared. Why would anyone be interested in her doings? She could think of several lame men in Bedford who had sustained injuries either during the war or in the course of their work. But what reason did one of them or anyone have to stalk her?
She shook off the unease. ’Twas likely a passerby who had stopped to wonder what a woman like herself was doing down Calts Lane.
Elizabeth pushed open the door. “Lucy,” she whispered to the dark room.
When her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw two couples—one on the bed and one on the floor.
“Lucy,” she whispered again, louder.
The woman on the floor sat up and pulled a ragged blanket against her. Even in the darkness, Elizabeth could tell the woman was naked. She averted her eyes as the woman stood up, wrapped herself in a thin blanket, and made her way to the bed.
Elizabeth hoped it wasn’t Lucy’s homeless sister, Martha. If so, Lucy was asking for more trouble.
Of late, the ordinances had grown stricter. Many parishes didn’t want to support the poor who didn’t belong to their towns, and the churchwardens had made new rules to keep them out. No one was permitted to house someone from another town without the consent of the mayor. Elizabeth doubted Lucy had presented a request or received permission for Martha to stay with her.
The woman shook Lucy.
“I have the babe,” Elizabeth whispered as Lucy raised her head. “He needs to nurse.”
Lucy didn’t move.
“Please, Lucy. I can pay you.”
Finally she nodded.
* * *
At dawn the next morning, Elizabeth hesitated outside the Costin cottage door. Brother Costin had insisted he didn’t want a housekeeper. But she was sure she could convince him of his need if she got the chance.
With firm set of her shoulders she pushed open the door and stepped inside. She stopped short when Mary staggered toward her and held out the wailing Thomas.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” The young girl stared past her with unseeing blue eyes. She cocked her head to one side, golden curls dangling across her face. “Thomas has been hungry and crying.”
Elizabeth took the babe from the girl and slid her finger into his mouth. He latched on to it and sucked with greedy gulps. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mary. But I’m not the wet nurse. I’m the housekeeper.”
“I know. The wet nurse is the one who smells like the chamber pot, and you’re the one who smells like fresh-baked bread.”
Elizabeth smiled. Indeed, Mary was perceptive to have gleaned so much when she had scarcely been near her or Lucy yesterday. After the funeral most of the congregation, along with family, had returned to the Costin home, where matrons of the congregation had assembled a modest feast of roasted lamb, bread, cheese, biscuits, and ale. In her efforts to help with the meal and cleanup, as well as tend to Thomas, she’d had little opportunity to seek out the other children.
“Momma.” Johnny’s broken wail tugged at Elizabeth’s heart. “Momma. Me want Momma.”
The young boy sat at the table, and tears trickled down his cheeks. Betsy hunched next to him, nibbling a piece of leftover cheese. She stared at Elizabeth with wide, scared eyes. At two and four, Johnny and Betsy wouldn’t understand why she, a stranger, stood there in place of their mother.
“Mom-ma!” he wailed louder.
Mary turned and, with outstretched arms, shuffled to the table, feeling her way toward him. “It’s all right, Johnny.”
Elizabeth saw the mug and Mary’s hand gliding toward it but only had time to say “Take heed—” when the girl bumped it. The liquid rushed into Betsy’s lap.
The girl squealed. Johnny began to wail louder. Mary tried to calm them and clean the spill, but in the process knocked over another mug, this time drenching Johnny.
Elizabeth shook her head at the chaos that had erupted in a matter of seconds. She strode to the cradle and placed Thomas down. However, without her finger to suck on, he started crying again—piercing, hungry cries.
Mary plopped onto the floor and burst into tears too.
“What has happened?” The door to the study banged open, and Brother Costin stumbled out, rubbing his eyes.
Elizabeth caught only a glimpse of him before shrieking and yanking her apron over her face to shield her vision. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Brother Costin was immodestly attired—from his breeches upward, his chest was bare and his broad shoulders exposed.
’Twas embarrassing to happen across the immodesty of another woman, as she had with Lucy from time to time, but to see a man unclothed, even if only partially, was altogether horrifying. ’Twas not decent nor appropriate for her, a young unmarried woman, to be anywhere near such a man.
“With all of the crying and screaming, methought the house was afire or someone was hurt,” he bellowed above the squalling. “But it’s only a woman with an apron over her head scaring my children.”
“ ’Tis the housekeeper,” Elizabeth called through the white linen.
“I don’t have a housekeeper.”
She’d never in her life seen a man in such a state of undress, not even her father. She squirmed and prayed he would disappear.
“All was calm until you arrived.”
She saw his form through the material as he moved across the room toward the children. He hoisted Johnny into one arm and Betsy into another and murmured soft words in their ears until they ceased their crying.
Even through the apron she could see the thick bands in his arms expand to hold the weight of both children.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block him out. “I’m only here to help.”
“Help?” He snorted. “You were the one who broke my nose yesterday, weren’t you?”
“And a few of your ribs. But ’twas an accident. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Reassuring. I suppose this was all an accident too? Frightening my children?”
“No. I mean, yes. What I mean to say is that I didn’t frighten them—not intentionally.”
“Then why are you holding your apron over your head?”
“Because of you.”
“Me?”
She nodded, heat scalding her cheeks again.
“You don’t wish me to see you?”
“No. ’Tis the other way around. I do not wish to see you.”
For a moment the room was silent except for Thomas’s pitiful cries.
Elizabeth cracked open her eyes and strained to see him through the fabric. He stood motionless, his head tilted to one side.
“If you do not wish to see me, then why are you here?”
This was going poorly. For once her words had deserted her, and she could speak nothing but nonsense. “I do wish to see you. But I don’t wish to see you this way.”
He shook his head then set Johnny and Betsy down. “Woman, you are making about as much sense as a vicar reading the Book of Common Prayers in Latin.” He began walking toward her.
“Stop. Let me explain.”
But he didn’t stop. He came toward her until her back was pressed against the door, leaving her no escape from his over-powering presence.
“What exactly are you hiding?”
“Nothing. Really. Only mine eyes.” She was in the most indecent of predicaments, and she couldn’t think straight to get herself out of it.
“What is wrong with your eyes that you must hide them from me?”
Her chest rose up and down rapidly. “Nothing is wrong with my eyes. Indeed, they are working altogether too well this day.”
He reached a hand out and fingered the edge of the apron.
Through the veil of linen, her gaze followed the path of his strong bare arm to his wide shoulders, and then down his smooth chest to his navel. “Oh, this is terrible! Most terrible! You must go away. Please leave. You must leave!”
“Go away? Leave?” He gave a light tug on the material. “Methinks you are forgetting som
ething important here.”
His face loomed closer.
Her breath drowned in her chest.
“You’re forgetting this is my home, and if anyone is to be doing the leaving, it will be you.” With his final word, he yanked the apron and pulled it from her grasp, forcing it down, so that she stared eye level at his well-defined chest.
With another shriek, she pinched her eyes shut. “I only meant that you must clothe yourself.”
He was quiet, as if finally understanding the impropriety of the situation.
She half-opened her eyes and prayed he would see the error of his ways.
He gave her a lazy, lopsided grin. Then he slapped his chest and rubbed his stomach before finally lifting his arms into the air.
She couldn’t stifle her gasp. “Brother Costin!”
He gave a short laugh. “I haven’t long been a part of the Independent Congregation. And there are still many things a former rebel and chief of sinners such as I must learn about Puritan ways.”
“Apparently so. Modesty and prudence are virtues of great worth.”
“In my youth it would have been a strange occasion for a maiden to hide her eyes from the sight of me thus unclothed. The maidens I once knew were much less chaste.”
“ ’Twould seem that way.” She was glad he didn’t have to know that she had looked at him—not long to besure—but it had been enough time to give herself an education in the male physique. “Now, Brother Costin, I must say it again—this is a most awkward situation—”
“Say no more.” He turned away from her. “I promise I’ll clothe myself, if you promise not to scare the children again.”
Elizabeth couldn’t help smiling. He had a charisma about him that made him easy to like. She could understand now why he was winning many souls for the Lord—and why he was winning the favor of all of the eligible young women. Not that she was one of those women—she wasn’t weak enough to let a man’s charm sweep her away.
She waited until he crossed the room to his study, listening to his heavy steps retreating before she opened her eyes. However, she was a second too soon. As he entered his closet, she saw his back.
She sucked in a breath. If the front of him was a sight of physical perfection, then his back was the opposite. Patches of purplish red skin marred the expanse of muscles.
She cringed at the thought of the amount of pain he had experienced to receive such scars.
“For all of the fuss you made about not looking at Father,” Mary said, “you sure are taking advantage of every opportunity to stare.”
Elizabeth jumped. She hurried across the room, took hold of the crying Thomas, and comforted him. She tried to ignore the bright blue eyes that followed her every movement even though they were blind.
Elizabeth realized that for one who was sightless, the girl could see more than most.
Chapter
5
Should I call you Momma?”
Elizabeth sat back on her heels and dusted the dirt from her hands. She peered out from the brim of her wide hat at the little girl kneeling in the herb patch next to her. Betsy’s face was smudged and her hands caked with soil. Her efforts to help prune the herb garden had evolved into the concocting of mud biscuits and weed soup.
“Since I don’t have a momma anymore, could you be my new one?”
Elizabeth smiled at the upturned face and brushed at a streak on the girl’s cheek. She was flattered the children had quickly grown to like her. Yet she was at a loss to answer such a question. How simply a four-year-old mind worked—thinking she could gain a new mother merely by the asking.
Elizabeth lifted her gaze to the forge to the outline of Brother Costin on his bench, illuminated by the brazier within. With his narrow tinman’s hammer, he shaped a piece of tinplate over the stake in front of him. The tapping echoed out the door and over the cottage plot—a pleasant, comfortable sound.
For a man grieving over the woman he’d lost just over a fortnight past, finding another wife was likely the furthest thing from his mind. Besides, he was a busy man. When he wasn’t gone preaching or locked away in his study, he labored in his forge, repairing kettles and pots and anything else the locals needed him to fix.
She’d hardly had the chance to speak with him, which had worked to her advantage. She wasn’t avoiding him—exactly. But he’d never officially given her permission to stay, and she didn’t want to give him the opportunity to send her home.
Elizabeth glanced to Mary under one of the apple trees with Johnny snuggled on her lap. He sucked the thumb of one hand and with the other fingered the edges of Mary’s curls. Thomas slept near Mary on a bed of blankets, quiet for the moment. Her gentle lilting voice rose and fell with the drama of David and Goliath—the story Johnny always asked her to tell.
“Momma is a good name.” Betsy stood so that she was at eye level. “Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, Betsy, Momma is a wonderful name.” She brushed her hand against the girl’s cheek. “But it can only belong to the woman married to your father.”
Betsy’s eyebrows furrowed.
Did a mind as young as Betsy’s even comprehend marriage? Elizabeth stroked her cheek trying to think of another way to explain.
“So if you marry Father, then I could call you Momma?”
“Well, yes, but ’tis not that easy—”
“Then you must marry my father.” Betsy shook the dirt from her skirt. “I shall go ask him this instant.”
“Oh—no, no, love.” Elizabeth jumped up and grabbed Betsy’s arm before she could dart away. “ ’Tis much more complicated than that.”
“I shall make it easy.” The girl squirmed under Elizabeth’s firm grip. “I promise.”
“Let me tell you about marriage.” Elizabeth lowered herself back to the ground and pulled Betsy onto her lap.
The girl settled herself and peered up at Elizabeth with wide eyes.
“ ’Tis like this.” Where did she start?
Her gaze wandered around the garden with its freshly turned soil and tiny sprouts showing in places. She had planted her own family’s cottage plot more than a month ago but was only now bringing order to the Costins’.
To besure she could plant a garden. But she was not the most qualified candidate for giving a marriage lecture. She was only a maiden and would herself benefit from such a talk.
“ ’Tis not easy to explain.”
Betsy’s eyes didn’t waver from hers.
She must do this or have the girl run to her father proposing marriage betwixt them. “The Bible says a believer is not to be yoked to an unbeliever. This is the most important consideration.”
“You’re a believer. Father’s a believer.”
“But there must also be the weighing of character—two people who share values, virtue, and godliness.”
“You’re godly. Father’s godly. You see, there’s nothing to stop you from marrying him. I shall go tell him this is what he must do.”
Elizabeth wrapped her arms tighter around the girl. The conversation wasn’t going as planned.
“No, love. You mustn’t go to your father about this. There must also be a mutual consent, a willing partnership of both the woman and the man, a liking of one to the other.”
At this Betsy was silent.
“Notwithstanding, I’m already courting another man.”
The girl studied Elizabeth’s face, as if trying to comprehend the magnitude of this revelation.
Thomas’s whimpering turned louder, the sign that his belly needed the nourishment she struggled to provide. Mary deposited Johnny and picked up the babe. She was proving to be a greater help than Elizabeth had anticipated.
“Do you love him?”
“Love who?”
“Do you love the man you will marry? I know my mother and my father loved each other. I heard ’em say it.”
Did she love Samuel Muddle? She’d never pretended to feel anything even near attraction for the man. Theirs was a practical matc
h. That was all. She didn’t have dreams about gaining a man’s love or attention. That was reserved for pretty women like Jane and Catherine, whom men watched and admired—or a woman like Mary Costin, who had gained the adoration of John.
“Well,” the girl said, “do you love him?”
“No, I don’t love him. He’s a good man, and perhaps with the passing of years we’ll learn to have affection for each other. But love isn’t always something that accompanies marriage vows. Sometimes marriage is more like a partnership.”
Betsy smiled and squirmed out of her arms. “Then it will work after all. You don’t need to love my father to marry him. Nor does he need to like you.”
Elizabeth lunged forward, but the girl dashed beyond her reach.
“I’ll go tell my father.”
“No, Betsy. ’Tis much too soon for your father to be thinking of such things.”
She skipped along without turning back.
“Come back, Betsy.” She couldn’t let the girl play matchmaker. It would only end in embarrassment for everyone. “Stop.”
Thomas’s cries rose in the morning air, becoming more insistent. Lucy had come at daybreak to nurse and rarely made it for two feedings in a row. At least once a day, Elizabeth walked over to Calts Lane to find the woman, often with that strange feeling of someone watching her.
Perhaps Mrs. Grew had been correct. What did an uneducated commoner like herself know about choosing a wet nurse? Maybe she’d made a mistake selecting Lucy. Lucy’s whole way of living was fraught with peril.
And she feared what would happen if the authorities learned that Lucy was harboring her homeless sister. Lucy had begged Elizabeth not to tell anyone about Martha. The woman’s husband had run off, and she didn’t know where the man was or even if he was still alive. Martha had nowhere to live and no way to support herself or her three children. She’d resorted to begging, moving from place to place to avoid the Bedell of Beggars, whose official duty was to track down poor beggars and then arrest and whip any who didn’t belong to their town.
Elizabeth rose and brushed the weeds and dirt off her petticoat. “Betsy! You mustn’t disturb your father.”