by Bella Bowen
Immediately, he led her around the dancers and to the front of the room. If the heat was affecting her, he expected her to be red in the face, but who was he to question her? Either way, fresh, cold air should bring her around. But when he reached for the door, she pulled back, eyeing the thing as if the devil himself stood on the other side.
“Let’s not go outside,” she said, forcing a smile though her face was no less pale than before. “It is a bit cooler here, away from the fire. Perhaps I should sit.”
Sitting seemed a wise decision since she was clearly on the verge of fainting away. Once he saw her onto a bench against the wall, he took a cup of water outside and added a handful of fresh snow to it, then returned to her.
“Miss Campbell, try this. It may perk you up.”
She forced another smile and took the drink, but she looked downright hopeless.
“What is it, Alexandra? Can you tell me?” He sat beside her, but left a respectable space between them. “Would you like me to fetch Fontaine for you?”
“No! Please, don’t fret over me. I was just…overcome. I’ll be fine.” Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment and her mouth opened. Her lips moved, but she said nothing. Then she closed her mouth tightly and looked away.
For the life of him, he didn’t know what could explain the change in her. He’d been boring her, perhaps, with his little story. He glanced down at his hands, almost expecting to see the stains that had faded years ago, but they looked normal enough. Backs and palms. Fingernails and forearms. Nothing of the old stains remained, no trace they’d ever been.
Two very feminine hands suddenly appeared over the tops of his own and squeezed them. He looked over to see the color back in Alexandra’s face.
“Don’t even think it,” she said, and after an awkward moment of gazing silently into his soul, she pulled her hands away. “Perhaps there was something in the punch that disagreed with me. I’m fine now. Right as rain.”
She did look better. In fact, she looked a bit flushed. And though she tried to hide it by pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve and waving it around while she spoke, her hands were shaking. Pale, then flushed? Nervous and shaking?
His heart sank.
It had happened dozens of times before, and he cursed his face for it. Every once in a while a young woman would act this same way around him, unable to control themselves, unable to separate their emotions from nothing more than a pretty picture.
“I appreciate your kindness,” he said, holding up his hands, referring to her attempt to comfort him. “Forgive me if I—”
“No, sir. Forgive me for interrupting your story. You were explaining why you didn’t want me dancing with Mr. Sparks…”
The man in question glanced their way like he’d overheard his name. John smiled innocently, but all amusement fell away when the candlelight bounced off the man’s smooth head currently covered with four thin locks of long hair.
“Where was I?”
“You ran away from home,” she prodded.
“Ah, yes. The summer of my fifteenth year. I left a note for my mother telling her I’d come back as soon as the stains were gone. I packed a ruck sack with the things I foolishly considered necessary, then I high-tailed it up the mountain to the north. A mountain called Snowy Range…”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mary was surprised she was able to sit calmly when deep inside her a ten-year-old girl jumped and screamed to be let out.
John Hermann had to be Rebel, the boy who’d come to her mountain and won her heart! The boy who haunted nearly every dream she remembered dreaming. The boy with the brown hands.
The world had spun away from her when he’d mentioned his stained skin. Who, other than the tanner’s son would have had those hands? She’d never considered it. When Rebel had stumbled onto their little fishing hole, she’d never asked what made his hands and forearms a different color than the rest of him. She’d assumed that God had changed his mind halfway through making him a white boy and decided at the last minute he should be something else.
She was ten, for heaven’s sake. And with no mother around to ask such questions, she’d settled for her own answers.
The memory of Rebel’s face had faded for the most part—all but his cornflower blue eyes. But she remembered his hands like they’d been her own. She’d stared at them for hours as he’d whittled away at one stick after another. She knew, if she looked closely, the nails on John Hermann’s pointing fingers would be rounded on the inside corner. That his thumbnails were pink and as smooth and flat as a frozen pond.
As soon as she’d seen those blue of his eyes, she should have looked at his hands.
She’d stopped breathing. He’d stopped talking. She blamed it on the fire, and they were headed outside to face Fontaine before she’d gotten a hold of herself. But what had brought her back, finally, to the present was his nervous check of those hands. She remembered that too. She’d remembered him being ashamed, and she couldn’t bear to see him ashamed again.
His hands had been beautiful. Smooth and soft as chewed leather. Dark and magical while they turned a piece of kindling into a bird.
Though she never expected it to happen, a living, breathing Rebel had stepped back into her life. But she’d embarrassed him. While others danced by, she’d taken those hands in hers and embarrassed him. And she would never be able to explain why—because, for the rest of that evening at least, she couldn’t be Jeb Radley’s daughter.
She had to remain Alexandra Campbell from Pennsylvania.
She’d promised to do her best not to be caught. But even though she had no right confessing her real name, there was nothing stopping her from listening to his story and hearing what Rebel remembered of that dreamlike summer. Would he remember a toe-headed mountain girl who’d lied to him about how old she was? Would he even remember kissing her? Did boys—men—care about such things?
“I ran out of food after three days,” he said. “So I had to start hunting. I set a few traps and went looking for water, prepared to head back down the mountain if I couldn’t at least catch a fish. I finally found a creek, but there was already someone fishing in it. A boy named Fritz—about my age, actually. His two little brothers, and a sister. At first, I thought they were going to run me off. They looked even hungrier than I felt, which was saying something. At fifteen, a boy’ll start chewing down trees if you don’t feed him every few hours, you see.”
Mary laughed, knowing just how right he was. One would think her brothers were a pack of wolves the way they’d devoured whatever was set on the table in front of them. And the young’uns had only been eleven and twelve when she’d left the mountain. It was just on the tip of her tongue to say so when she remembered her place and bit her lips so nothing dangerous might fly out.
“But they didn’t run me off. Fritz pointed to a dark spot ten feet down the creek and told me there were fish in that hole, or he was a flea-bitten hound dog. And if I came up with nothing, they had plenty to share.” He smiled and looked away like he was watching the past happen all over again.
Mary remembered that day too. It had been the second-best day of her life. The first-best, and the worst, had been the day he kissed her.
“They invited me back to their house to share their supper and meet their pa. I told them I had run away and that their pa would only force me to go home if he knew. I made them promise to keep my secret. They made me promise to come back the next day when their pa went hunting.” He grinned. “And I did. Every day for nearly a month. My parents were worried sick, but my own father refused to come looking for me. I’ll never be able to make it up to my mother.” He shook his head. “Boys aren’t born with brains, did you know?”
Mary smiled and nodded, agreeing more than he could possibly guess.
“I thought it was strange for a man to leave every morning to go hunting, so I followed their pa once. Turns out the man was a moonshiner. But I had to give him credit for coming home to his children every night.
And every few days, he’d bring home fresh meat.”
“Moonshiner?” She could barely say the word. Her mined reeled to the rhythm of the music while she tried to reconcile a dozen strange memories. It would explain so much.
John nodded. “No need to go hunting every day just to feed a family of five.”
Mary felt like the world around her was tipping sideways, showing her clearly something she’d been unable to see all her life. Of course her pa had cried when they’d said their good-byes. Without Mary to look after the boys and cook the meals, he wouldn’t be able to stay away all day.
Now that she was gone, would Pa end up teaching the boys to make moonshine too?
She was suddenly anxious to go home, to check on her brothers and get a promise from her pa that he’d take good care of them. But Jens and Max were clever, enough. One day, they’d realize, as she had, that there might be a better life for them away from Snowy Range. She had no call to sway them. Their lives were their own to make.
Just as hers was.
Oblivious to the chaos he’d unleashed in her head, John continued with his tale while watching the couples stomp and skip in patterns across the room and back again.
He chuckled quietly. “I wore so many blisters on my fingers, I cringe thinking about it. Fritz’s sister was always watching my hands, see, so I figured I should do something interesting with them. I started whittling things. Silly, unrecognizable things, but she pretended to see them clearly. Fritz whittled too. And when we weren’t whittling, we were chopping and building rafts and forts, and whatever we could think of.”
“It sounds like the perfect summer for boys.”
John’s eyes lit up. “And not bad for girls, either.” Then he sighed sadly. “Mary.”
Her heart wept at the sound of her name spoken with that deep voice. “I beg your pardon?”
“Fritz’s sister. Her name was Mary. Pale hair. Freckles. Sun-browned skin.” He grinned. “I thought she was beautiful.”
Mary tried to keep from blushing, but he was watching his hands, not her, and turning beet-red himself.
“I also thought she was thirteen. She looked awfully thirteen.” He rolled his eyes. “But she lied. She was only ten. Heaven help me, I fell in love with a ten year old!”
She forced herself to inhale, then had to force the air out again. “In love?”
“Hopelessly. Which brings me to you and Charlie Sparks.” He nodded in Charlie’s direction. “And the rest of them too, while we’re at it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s like this. My Mary would be seventeen now, just like you. And the thought of her father sending her to a place like Diamond Springs, to marry her off, gets me pretty riled, especially if she married an older man.”
“Older? These men can’t be much over thirty, can they?”
He’d called her My Mary. Of course, she’d like nothing more than relish the endearment, but she had to pay strict attention if she was going to keep up with the conversation. She found it hard to think clearly with her heart jumping around in her chest, demanding she confess. But she simply couldn’t do something so selfish as break her promise to Alexandra—not when the consequences for the other woman might be dire.
He gave a snort. “I admit they’re honorable enough. But they’re also established. Set in their ways. Looking for a woman to fit into their lives, fill a space on their buckboard,” he waved his hand, “like a sack of flour pressed into the gap between the coffee and the beans. Like a few sundries missing from the chuck box.”
She stifled a smile. “The chuck box? They’re looking for a mighty small wife, then.”
He laughed. “I’m sure you know what I mean.”
“Do I? Are you saying a younger man won’t try to stuff his wife into the chuck box?” She couldn’t help giggling. Maybe it was the ten-year-old Mary inside her, finding a way out.
He reached up and tapped the end of her nose as she remembered him doing a dozen precious times that long gone summer. “A younger man wouldn’t look for a woman to add to his life. He’d look for a woman to make a life with. Someone to build his life around, not tether her to a life he’s already built.
She was tempted to tease him further by telling him he’d better marry soon or he’d fall into the same category as those dancing by. But she couldn’t let the evening end before hearing the rest of his story. She only knew how the summer had ended for her.
“So, tell me, John. Whatever happened to your Mary?”
He sobered and watched the dancers for a bit, but she could tell he was gathering his thoughts. After a few minutes, she wondered if he remembered where he was, let alone the fact that someone waited for him to speak.
Finally, she laid a hand on his arm. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me. Some things are just too private, aren’t they?”
He sighed and shook his head like he was shaking off sleep. “It was a kiss, actually, that ruined it all.”
Her heart sank. He regretted what was the most memorable, sweetest moment of her life! And it was the sweetness that had made the rest bearable.
She had to turn aside to dab her handkerchief to the corners of her eyes before enough moisture gathered to rain down her face.
“I’d made her something special,” he went on, “in the evenings, in my own pitiful little shelter. It was little better than a nest made in the burned-out ruins of a cabin.” His expression turned wistful. “In a piece of knotted pine, I’d carved a rose, copying the shape of a little pink rosebush I’d found growing in the floor of that cabin. There was no roof, you see. Plenty of sunshine and rain there.” He smirked. “Which made it such a pitiful shelter.”
Mary couldn’t speak. She’d had no idea his carving had been of her own special rosebush.
“A pink rose, like the color of your gown.”
Staring at the ruffles along her knee, she could see the roses as clearly as if they’d been sewn to the gown itself.
“I saw Fritz and the boys washing in the creek and jumped on the chance to speak with Mary alone. I hurried back to my hideout, grabbed the gift, and ran to her house where I knew she’d be hanging out the laundry. Mary, I made this for you, I said. She got all teared-up because she had nothing to give me in return. So I suggested a kiss, like it had just come to me. But of course, I’d practiced saying it a hundred times.”
He looked away again and Mary could almost feel his lips on hers, wondering if he was reliving the moment too.
She forced herself back into Alexandra’s skin. “So?” she asked lightly. “How was it, kissing a ten-year-old?”
John looked back at her and grinned. “Just as good as kissing a thirteen year old I suppose. It wasn’t my first, but it was my last kiss for a good long while.”
Mary couldn’t imagine being more flattered. At least he didn’t seem to regret the kiss itself, and that was something.
A pained smile twisted his mouth. “Fritz caught us. He was angry with me, but he was furious with Mary. I was supposed to be his friend, not hers. I doubt he had anyone in his life who wasn’t family, and he believed she’d stolen me. I feared he might hurt her, so I refused to leave. He said it didn’t matter, that she’d taken something of his, so he’d take away what was hers. Then he ran.”
Mary’s stomach turned at the memory. She’d known exactly what Fritz had been talking about. And she’d known where he was headed. There was no stopping her tears now. The wound was old, seven years come summer, and still the pain was as raw as the day it happened.
Tears. For a silly rose.
She was grateful John wasn’t looking in her direction while she mopped her face.
He gave a heavy sigh. “We chased after Fritz. You have no idea how fast an angry kid can move.”
Oh, but she did.
“I ran my heart out and I couldn’t even keep up with Mary. By the time I reached the burned-out cabin, Fritz had been and gone. Mary was on her knees clutching the remnants of the
little rosebush. There were deep boot marks where her brother had stomped the plant into the ground. I remember the tiny drops of blood and scratches on her hands from the thorns. Hundreds of little pink petals covered the ground.”
The music stopped. Mary wiped her eyes one last time and looked up to face the dancers. She forced a smile and Alice started toward her, but she shook her head and thankfully, the girl turned and walked toward the refreshment table instead. Mary was careful not to look anyone else in the eye.
John reached over and squeezed her hand, then didn’t let go. And there they sat, holding hands and watching the floor. Eventually, the musicians started up again and the dancers forgot them.
“It’s a waltz,” he said. “I’ll tell you the rest while we dance. All right?”
She nodded and got to her feet. For a few measures, she stared at his tie, afraid of what he’d see if she looked up.
“Would you rather I didn’t go on?” He sounded worried. “Childhood memories always sound so foolish when we’re grown.”
“Oh, no.” She smiled and shook her head. “I’d like to hear how the story ends.”
The room passed behind his head in a swirl of lights and colorful dresses as he spoke. “Well, it wasn’t pleasant business. In fact, I’ve never told anyone what happened on Snowy Ridge that summer. Until now. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would have helped me put it behind me sooner.”
Mary took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “So the roses were destroyed. And?”
“I told her I was sorry I’d kissed her.” It sounded like a confession.
“You didn’t.” She remembered all too well, but she had to pretend she was hearing it for the first time. And she was dying to know his version of the rest. If someone interrupted them now, she was afraid she might scream.
“I’m afraid I did. But she told me not to be sorry because our kiss was the only thing Fritz couldn’t take away from her.”
“Very sweet.”
“But I reminded her she’d always have the rose I made her out of wood.”