Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 03]

by Choices of the Heart

  “Do you have services here?” Esther abruptly asked Liza.

  Liza ceased smoothing the ribbons laid across Esther’s table and shook her head. “Not tomorrow. The preacher comes by when he can. He promised to be here for the Independence Day service this summer, but we aren’t usually sure when there’ll be services until the day before or so.”

  Esther schooled her features so her relief didn’t show. “What do you do then?”

  “If Pa is feeling all right, we have prayers and singing in the parlor. If he’s in too much pain to get up, we just stay quiet all day after tending to the animals and the like. I don’t know about tomorrow . . .” Liza’s pretty mouth turned down at the corners. “He didn’t look well this morning.”

  He hadn’t.

  “It’s going to rain,” Liza continued. “Rain always makes him feel worse.”

  Esther looked at the cloudless sky. “How do you know it’s going to rain?”

  “It smells like it.” Liza’s nostrils flared. “Outside, that is. In here it smells like your perfume. What is it?”

  “Violets. Those little purple flowers in the woods? My cousins sent it to me from England.”

  Liza’s eyes widened. “Truly? From England? Is that where your clothes come from? I ain’t never seen such fine lace before.”

  “The lace is, yes.” Esther ducked her head. “I’m the youngest girl in the family, so they spoil me.”

  Her uncles, her cousins, her brothers, and her father all treated her like a princess. Even when she brought shame on them, they didn’t blame her. “It’s not your fault” had been their refrain in Papa’s study, on long walks on the beach, in letters from abroad.

  She thought they should be right. Except to treat his wife, she’d avoided Mr. Oglevie after he married. But she must have done something wrong. A great deal wrong. Why else would the rest of the town blame her?

  The only reasons she could come up with in all these months of pondering and anguishing warned her yet again to stay away from Zach and Griff alike. Devote herself to her students, to Bethann if she could befriend the unhappy woman, perhaps even to Hannah.

  “Miss Esther, are you all right?” Liza touched Esther’s arm.

  She jumped, blinked. “Yes, I’m sorry. Woolgathering. Did you pick a ribbon?”

  “I like the pink one.”

  “Good. It’ll match the color in your cheeks.” Esther smiled, presented the younger girl with the length of satin, then shooed her out the door to go about her chores.

  Esther worked on lessons and helped with supper, avoiding even accidental eye contact with Griff, then retreated to her room as soon as she could politely do so. She read Emma to the accompaniment of the rain Liza predicted, a watery veil between her and the rest of the world.

  You wanted isolation, she reminded herself. Don’t go all weepy over getting it.

  She walked to the door to inhale the sweetness of the rain-washed earth and heard the distant strains of music, liquid sweetness conjured from a stringed instrument. Not isolated at all. Not with those notes reaching out to her. She could close the door and return to the aloneness she thought she wanted, or she could remain in the doorway and feel the embrace of the music. Her head said close the door for her own safety. Her heart said stay where she was.

  She stayed.

  14

  “Don’t you like her?” Momma asked Griff after supper Wednesday night.

  He leaned against the back wall of the house, where he hoped to have a porch soon—a porch surrounded by a real garden with flowers and bushes and soft, green grass rather than trampled earth and pebbles. Then, and only then, would he feel he could bring a bride home. At least the kind of bride he wanted.

  The kind he wasn’t going to get anytime soon.

  He shoved his hands through his hair. “I like her right well. She’s about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. But I promised Zach he could court her.”

  “What are you talking about, Son?” Momma rubbed her right eye with a knuckle.

  “He took a fancy to her, so I said he could have his chance to court her without me interfering.” Griff hesitated. “For the sake of peace.”

  “Peace.” Momma rolled her eyes. “You’ll get peace—a piece of my mind. Zach has some fine qualities, but they ain’t anywhere near yours.”

  Griff smiled. “You’re my momma, of course you say that.”

  “No.” She gave her head a hard shake. “I say it because it’s true. Tamar says it, and she’s his momma. You work twice as hard as he does. You are smarter, better-looking, sing like one of the angels must have sung to the shep—”

  “Stop.” Griff doubled over laughing to disguise his blush.

  “Not a bit of that isn’t true.”

  “I can’t argue with my momma, but I’d like to, even if it mattered. Which it don’t.” He heard Esther’s melodious voice and corrected himself. “Doesn’t.”

  Momma slid a sidelong glance toward him. “What if I order you to ask her to the Independence Day celebration?”

  He stopped laughing and straightened. “I can’t risk trouble between Zach and me. We’re the hope of the future of our families.”

  “That ain’t saying much about hope, Son.”

  “Momma, you shouldn’t talk so about Zach.”

  “He’s lazy and spends more time hunting and fishing with Henry Gosnoll than he does working that ferry for his pa.”

  “Gosnoll works hard at the mine now,” Griff pointed out.

  “And I reckon Zach suggested you hire him despite what he’s done to us.”

  Griff sighed. “That was a long time ago, and no one else on the mountain knows anything about mining.”

  “But hiring Henry Gosnell encourages the hard feelings with your kin.”

  “Don’t they understand?” Griff slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. “I’m working hard for all of them so they can have work and not starve or drink themselves to death.”

  But he’d heard about Brenna attempting to throw a stone at Zach’s face. Brenna understood the tension between the families and took it out on any Brooks she encountered, even though it wasn’t her fight.

  “It’s none of our fight,” Griff said. “Not anymore. Yet there’s Pa preaching revenge still.”

  “He don’t when his back don’t hurt so bad.”

  “These last two days, the weather’s been dry and not too hot. What about when that changes? Is he going to take shots at the next Gosnoll or Brooks he sees just for sport? Especially if Bethann’s trouble is caused by one of them . . .”

  Every muscle tensed at the memory of a decade earlier—Pa heading out with his shotgun with the intention of killing the man who had ruined his daughter. He hadn’t succeeded. Henry Gosnoll had married Hannah Brooks, and they’d left the mountain for a time. So Pa took his rage out on Uncle Tom Brooks—or tried to. He failed. But Uncle Tom and his brother retaliated by shooting Griff’s older brother. Then Pa retaliated further, and so it went. Ambushes, killings, woundings, and not a soul talking when someone called in the government men to put an end to it. No one knew for sure who shot whom, so not a body laid claim to any knowledge of shootings. Accidents happened.

  But not with knives.

  Griff put his hand to his side. A knife attack was new. So was attacking someone off the ridge. A true intention to rob, or someone trying to make the assault look like a random crime?

  “We don’t know who caused Bethann’s trouble this time,” Momma said quietly. “She goes when and where she wills and won’t talk.”

  “Will he wed her?” Griff was forever hopeful someone would make an honest woman of his sister, making her less a shame to the family for her immoral ways and, worse, for starting the feud.

  Momma shrugged. “She says he’ll go away with her, but she thought that last time.”

  “He was promised to be married to somebody else the last time.”

  “And you think that was the last time she went astray?”


  “Ooph.” The words struck Griff like a hammer blow to the middle. “I didn’t think about it. She’s my sister. The very notion . . . I thought she’d changed her ways.”

  “I wanted to think it. I’ve prayed for her every day and night, but her heart is like a stone against the Lord.”

  “There’s something in the Bible about that. God said he’d break the hearts of stone.”

  “Ezekiel. He needs a mighty big hammer for her. But not you. You, Son, have a kind heart, a pure heart.”

  Not pure enough when he looked at Esther Cherrett. Not when he touched her. Not when he heard the musical tones of her voice and wondered if she could sing.

  Not when he thought about Zach courting her.

  “Ask her to the Independence Day celebration, Griffin.”

  “Oh no, you’re using my whole name.” He tried to laugh it off, throwing up his hands as though to ward off a blow. “I gotta obey or suffer the consequences.”

  “No consequences except you’re a man grown and too much alone. Your pa and I had three children by the time we were your age. You need a wife. And not one of these mountain girls. You got money now. You’ll want to go into town and not have your wife shame you. You need a pretty and truly good girl.”

  “More like I’d shame her.”

  “Not as much as Zach would.”

  Griff gripped his wrist behind his back. “Momma, don’t you understand? I like working in the fields. I like mucking out the stalls. We could get as rich from that mine as—as Governor Gregory, and I would still like to do these things. Do you think a prim and proper female like Esther Cherrett wouldn’t find that shameful? Can you think of her taking me back to her father? She talks like she’s some kind of princess.”

  “Like I said, don’t you like her much?”

  Griff took a few paces away from the house, then swiveled on his heel and stalked back. “I like her too much. I’m half tempted—no, more than half—to take my dulcimer and play it under her window to convince her I’m the better catch. But she runs away from me like I’m a bucket of turpentine next to a fire, and then clings to Zach like he’s keeping her afloat. There. That convince you I’m right to leave her to Zach to take his chances with her?”

  Momma smiled. “Not at all. Now go ask her. She’s out feeding the cats.”

  “She’s feeding the cats? Doesn’t she know we’ll get overrun with ’em if she does that?”

  “Maybe she’s lonely and doesn’t care.” Momma patted his shoulder and turned toward the back door. “Be a good son and do what I say.”

  He figured he could find a way not to obey Momma, such as wait for Zach to invite Esther so him doing so too would be nonsensical. But then, he did want to find out what she was running from and why someone would find it bad enough to pursue her to the ridge.

  So he waited for three days. After two, he wondered how they had managed mealtimes without her. She cooked, she served, she ensured the young’uns came to the table neat and clean. Sometimes he caught glimpses of her seated in the classroom going through her books and writing things on sheets of paper. Another time he encountered her seated on the porch with Liza, their needles flying in and out of bits of material, making fancy stitchery work. Was there nothing she could not do well? She seemed so perfect.

  Too perfect. Instinct warned him to keep his distance until he knew her better. The Independence Day celebration was a month off. He had plenty of time to get to know her before attending an activity that proclaimed a couple was courting if they arrived together.

  Zach, on the other hand, had those three weeks’ head start on Griff. He knew her better. She seemed comfortable with Zach and kept her distance from Griff as much as the proximity of their living conditions allowed.

  Which was part of the difficulty with Momma. She cornered him one night when he was coming in from a swim in the waterfall pool after a particularly hot day of work. “Did you ask her yet?”

  “No, Momma, it’s weeks off yet and I don’t even know her that well.”

  “And you won’t if you don’t stick around of an evening and get to know her.” She narrowed her eyes. “You mooning over someone else?”

  Griff laughed. “No, ma’am, even though you’ve been after me to do so for two years now.” He narrowed his eyes back at her. “What’s the rush?”

  “You wanta find a girl before that mine makes us rich.”

  “If it makes us rich.”

  “I reckon every female from Roanoke to Bristol thinks it will. And thinks she’ll catch herself a rich husband who looks like you.”

  Griff squirmed like a schoolboy with frogs in his pockets at church. “So do you want me to ask Miss Esther to the celebration ’cause you want me to court her, or do you want me to ask her to keep the other girls away?”

  Momma just smiled in response.

  At the sound of footfalls crunching toward her, Esther rose so quickly blood rushed to her head and light danced before her eyes in the darkness. The two cats she’d been feeding scraps of her fish from supper wound themselves around her legs, butting her with their heads, and purring loudly enough to be mistaken for distant thunder.

  “You’ll bring on every cat on the mountain if you feed them fish,” Griff said.

  “Then someone will have to catch more fish.” She scooped the smaller of the two felines, an orange tabby, into her arms. “They’re precious.”

  “They probably have fleas.”

  “Not likely. I rubbed them with some cedar.”

  Griff propped one shoulder against the side of the cabin. “You know a lot about that sort of thing.”

  “It’s part of being a good housewife. That is—” She buried her hot face in the cat’s soft fur, inhaling the tang of the cedar. “A female trained to be a good housewife.”

  “Or a midwife.”

  She jumped, and the cat leaped from her arms and streaked into the night. “Your mother told you.”

  “You should have told us.”

  “Why? It has nothing to do with my ability to teach.”

  “It does if you lied about having teaching experience.”

  “I didn’t. I helped teach the other midwife apprentices.”

  “Why did you keep it a secret from us?” He leaned toward her, all powerful male and smooth voice. “I’d think you’d be right proud of it.”

  Without a touch, he drew her to him. She leaned his way, smelled lye soap and sun-dried fabric, fresh and clean and compelling.

  She crossed her arms. “You didn’t need to know.”

  “Why? Aren’t you proud of it?” He faced her, one hand braced on the cabin wall, scant inches from her head.

  She swallowed. “I was.”

  “And now?”

  She couldn’t forget the sounds. Screams. Sobs. The crack of a hand across the woman’s face. Nor could she block out the smells. Blood. Fear. Death.

  She summoned up her strength, the core of icy steel inside her for the past four and a half months. “No one needs a midwife anymore. Doctors do most of the work. Some females are even talking of going to medical school if they can get in. Midwifery is no longer an honorable calling for a female.”

  “Hmm.”

  That he didn’t believe her was obvious in that single sound.

  “Not that it’s any of your concern, Mr. Tolliver. I am perfectly capable of carrying out my duties and more.”

  “Not if you’ve brought us trouble.”

  “I . . . haven’t.” His hand was suddenly too close, the fingertips touching her hair. Breath snagged in her throat. The rough wall of the cabin loomed behind her, preventing her from backing away.

  “May I help you with something, Mr. Tolliver?” she demanded in the coldest of voices.

  He chuckled rather like one of the cat’s purrs. “My mother told me to ask you to the Independence Day celebration.”

  “So are you asking me?”

  And she had prayed he wouldn’t ask her. She didn’t need more evidence that God was ignoring
her pleas.

  “I still obey my momma.” His teeth flashed in the moonlight.

  Esther’s middle fluttered, reason enough to say no. She should not feel this way with him, the wanting to be close to someone again, cared for, cherished—all those things her foolish pride had denied her. Because she deserved better than what Seabourne had to offer?

  So much better she’d gotten herself into deserving nothing now.

  Not that she wanted Griff Tolliver. He was a fine man, hardworking, and even finer to look at. But he attracted her. Once before, disaster came when she thought she had met someone she wanted to be close to. Until she knew more of him than his looks and superficial charm, and then her hopes failed. Worse than failed.

  She licked her dry lips. “May I say no?”

  “You may, but it’ll be difficult to say yes to Zach when he asks you.”

  “Perhaps I can simply stay home.”

  “No one stays home. There’ll be two hundred people there if there’s half a dozen. They’ll all want a look at you.” He tilted her chin up with a forefinger.

  She couldn’t jerk away or she’d smash her head against the log behind her. Ah, but how that infinitesimal touch felt as though it would leave a mark behind. The flutter in her middle turned to jumping grasshoppers.

  “I’ll say no to both.” Her voice emerged in a whisper. “I can watch out for the children.”

  “But you can’t miss the dancing. We’ll all want a turn on the floor with you.”

  “Of course.”

  Reels, quadrilles, any number of dances moved so quickly and changed partners often enough she could manage that without trouble.

  “All right then. Something to look forward to.” He ducked his head.