Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 03]

by Choices of the Heart

  She dropped to all fours and began to crawl. Her dress caught on the rough floor and ripped. Another gown ruined. They’d all be ruined if she didn’t reach her room.

  She pushed open that door. Less smoke. Cool, sweet air flowing through the window—

  And a flash of heat behind her.

  She whirled, caught the flame curling across the floor, and threw her cloak atop it. The wet wool smothered it, but another flame near the window burned more insistently, sparkling off broken glass.

  A lightning strike that broke a window?

  No time to think of that. She slammed the door and began snatching her things from tables and pegs. Books, clothes, and satchel ended up in a jumble atop the coverlet. She wrapped it together and tossed it out of the window.

  A line of red-gold ran beneath the door. No more time.

  She scrambled to her feet, coughing from the smoke, and stumbled to the window. Her skirt was still tucked inside her sash. She raised her leg to climb over the sill. A bit too high for that. And the opening was too small. Surely too small for her to go through. She beat on the frame with her fists. The nails groaned but held fast. She needed something stronger than she was. Someone stronger than she was. But the family slept, exhausted from the ordeal with Bethann, the noise hidden by the storm.

  She heard the flames now with only the door and fireplace between her and fire. In the darkness, she peered around for a ram, something with which to batter at the window frame.

  She grabbed the washstand. The pitcher slid to the floor and shattered like the glass in the other room.

  Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

  She hefted the stand and slammed it against the window frame. More glass broke. Arms aching, she slammed it again. Nails shrieked. Heart pounding out of her chest, she heaved the stand again.

  The window frame and remaining shards of glass fell atop her bundle. She tumbled after them, catching her diaphragm against the edge of the opening. Winded, she hung there for a moment, arms, legs, body shaking, flames eating through the door behind her.

  Somehow she must find the strength to crawl through the opening, get away, get her things away. Her breath whooped and wheezed through her lungs. She couldn’t drag herself to safety. She was trapped with the building burning around her.

  Then she heard it, the sound of Griff calling her name, louder, louder, coming toward her.

  She raised her head. “Here! I’m—” Her voice broke on a spasm of coughing.

  But he was there, grasping her beneath her arms and hauling her through the open window. He held her tightly against him, murmuring something against her hair, then set her down. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m all right.” She sank to her knees. “My things. Must get my things.”

  “Here.” Griff scooped up the bundle and strode away from the cabin.

  Esther grabbed up a shoe, a mud-splattered book, and her satchel, which had fallen out of the bundle, then followed. Behind her, the fire burst through the door and into her room.

  Griff deposited her things inside the kitchen, then snatched up the two buckets by the back door and left. The rest of the family save for Bethann streamed into the kitchen and fanned out the door, calling directions, asking questions, working as a team that had either practiced or had experience with fire. They pumped water. They filled pails and carried them to the fire. Even Mr. Tolliver participated.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Esther joined them. The building couldn’t be saved. They could only ensure that between the soaking rain and the water they poured over the fire, they could keep it from spreading to the wooden stockade fence or one of the other buildings, now that the rising wind was blowing the storm across the ridge.

  It took until dawn and then some to subdue the blaze down to nothing more than smoldering ruins, partial walls, and a collapsed stone chimney. Esther’s hands and arms ached from the strain of carrying the heavy buckets by their wire bails. She plodded rather than walked. She couldn’t run like Jack and Ned, tireless as always, shouting, exclaiming over every shower of sparks shooting into the sky like fireworks for a celebration. Liza and Brenna pumped, filled, and carried with the same energy as their younger brothers, at least twice as much as Esther managed. Slow. She was so slow. The mud splashed up to her knees, and she had to wade through it to move a step. Her head pounded and she kept coughing. Then she picked up a bucket and her hands gave way. Her fingers simply refused to curl around the twisted wire handle.

  She dropped to her knees and held her hands to the crimson light fingering its way through the haze topping the mountains. From the centers of her palms to the tips of her fingers, blisters covered her hands, blisters that had formed, broken, and reformed. For the first time in her life, she didn’t think about protecting her precious midwife’s hands.

  33

  The schoolroom and Esther’s chamber collapsed in on themselves with a final shower of sparks barely visible against the rising sun. The yard around it was a churned-up sea of mud. The air and everyone nearby reeked of smoke. And Esther discovered that besides her blistered hands, somewhere along the way her hair had gotten singed.

  She sat on a chair outside the kitchen door while Mrs. Tolliver took a pair of shears to the frizzed and uneven ends. What felt like ten pounds fell from Esther’s head and onto the ground. The waves turned to curling tendrils that bounced and coiled around her shoulders. She tried to pin it up, but it refused to stay in the pins as though it had a life of its own. After a lifetime of always being the neatest person in any room she graced, she looked like her brothers did when they returned from one of their merchant sailing excursions—unkempt and a bit wild.

  “You need a ribbon,” Liza said. “I have some.”

  “I have one.” Esther retrieved the embroidered satin ribbon from her salvaged belongings. “It’s so pretty.”

  “Too pretty to put on your hair until you can wash it. It’s a bit sooty.”

  Brushing had helped some, but they all looked grimy without the time or energy to draw water for eight individual baths.

  “Use this.” Liza produced a faded bit of calico sewn into a long, thin strip.

  Esther tied her hair back, her fingers stiff from the blisters. The lack of piles of hair atop her head gave her a sense of freedom. Dressed in one of Liza’s gowns, a good enough fit except for being too short, she looked young, more Liza’s age than her own, especially with a smudge of soot still running along her hairline.

  “I look like a ragamuffin,” she exclaimed.

  Not the beauty of Seabourne, Virginia. Not a beauty at all. And not a midwife with her hands so sore and blistered. She should feel free.

  She felt adrift, a part of nothing and very, very dirty. First she washed her clothes, a torture to her hands as she scrubbed her few remaining garments, then hung them up to dry in the brilliant sunlight. Somehow she must obtain fabric and sew more. She couldn’t possibly go about with only two dresses, and neither of them a good one. In the dark, she hadn’t known what she snatched, and she hadn’t taken her riding habit or her best dress. Her gray one with the faint bloodstain and a plain blue linen were all that had survived. Even her cloak was gone.

  But she had her fine shoes. Silly creature that she was, she had managed to save all her shoes, from her riding boots to a pair of plain leather slippers to blue satin dancing slippers that had matched the one truly fine gown she’d brought along. And she had her books. Those were harder to replace than dresses.

  “We’ll manage more for you.” Liza helped Esther hang up her petticoats. “Uncle Elias’s wife makes the finest cloth on the ridge. And I sew a fine seam.”

  “You do. Your needlework is exquisite. How did you learn?”

  Liza shrugged. “Momma taught me. I . . . well, I wasn’t going to show you this yet . . .” Liza ran into the house and emerged a few minutes later to show Esther a length of fabric about six inches wide and covered with tiny blue flowers. “To sew on your gray dress to cov
er up that stain and make it pretty.”

  “Liza . . .” Esther’s throat closed. She blinked hard to clear tears from her eyes.

  She had received many fine gifts in her life. Her English relatives liked lavishing their wealth on their poor American relations, who weren’t particularly poor at all, especially once her brothers started earning a living in trade. But they sent her patterns and the fabrics to make herself gowns too fine for Seabourne, fans from Paris, and hats from Italy. Her shoes were fashioned of the finest Moroccan leather, and she even owned a muff of Russian sable, which due to the mild climate of the coast never saw use. They were all the fripperies money could buy.

  No money could buy the love and attention that went into this length of homespun linen stitched with cotton floss.

  “You don’t like it?” Liza’s lower lip quivered.

  “Liza.” Esther cleared her throat. “I’ve never received a more precious gift.” She hugged the younger woman. “Thank you.”

  “It’s nothin’, really.” Liza kicked at the mud. “Bethann said as how you’re not as good as we all thought you were and we should send you about your business, but I don’t believe her?” Her declaration ended with a question.

  “I suppose that’s up to your mother to decide. You can ask her what Bethann told her.” Esther busied herself hanging a chemise so gauzy and lacy, her face heated at the notion that everyone could see it. So far, she had hung her under things to dry inside her room to preserve her modesty. Now ruffles and beribboned trims fluttered in the breeze for all to see.

  For Griff to see.

  Except he hadn’t been around all day. He’d inhaled a cup of steaming coffee in the kitchen, then vanished somewhere beyond the compound. If something went well for her, her clothes would dry before he returned.

  She didn’t have time to concern herself about that, for Mrs. Tolliver set them all to work cleaning debris from her kitchen garden and picking up fallen branches around the compound to use as kindling. Esther worked beside the others, but her hands hurt so badly, tears sprang unbidden to her eyes, and when she wiped them away, she saw blood on her fingers where more blisters had broken.

  “I have to take care of my hands,” she said to anyone within hearing distance and ran across the yard. Her satchel contained an ointment she thought might help—lavender and rose hips, fragrant and soothing. She stood at the kitchen table trying to apply it to herself.

  “Let me help.” Griff appeared in the kitchen doorway, filling it.

  She glanced at him. “You’ve managed to miss out on the hard work.”

  “I’ve been inspecting storm damage at the mine and about, making sure we don’t have flooding to worry us none.”

  “Oh.” She regretted her acid tongue. “I should have thought of that.”

  “No reason why. You’re a town girl.” He touched her shoulder. “I need to talk to you.”

  “About . . . what?” She discovered she was trembling, certain he had drawn the worst conclusions from what she’d admitted to Bethann and was about to send her away.

  He came to the table and took the salve from her hands. “About the fire. What do you need me to do?”

  “Rub it in.”

  “My fingers are rough. I might hurt you.”

  “You won’t.”

  She had hurt herself by letting herself fall in love with him.

  “You have such pretty hands.” He cradled one in his palm and used the gentle touch he applied to the dulcimer strings to smooth salve over her blisters. “I hate to see them marred.”

  As calloused and scarred as his hands were, they were beautiful, so broad and strong, so tender and sensitive. He could wield an ax that split a log in two, or he could coax heart-stirring music from a set of thin strings. He didn’t know Shakespeare or John Milton or Henry Fielding, but he knew a hundred hymns of praise and ballads. He didn’t know much Scripture, but he knew the Lord loved him, the difference between the right way and the wrong way to treat people, and how to love. He worked hard without complaint and took the time to show someone else the grandeur of his mountains.

  How could she have ever flirted with a soulless man like Alfred Oglevie—for however short a time she had considered him a potential suitor—when men like Griffin Tolliver existed?

  She bent her head and kissed the back of his hand.

  His fingers stilled. “Why? To thank me for helping you on Independence Day?”

  “No.” She looked him in the eye. “Because I have never met a finer man.”

  “A finer man would have protected you last night.”

  “You saved me. I was stuck in that window until you came along.”

  “You’d have gotten out, I reckon.” He released her hand and lifted a strand of her hair to the light. “How did it happen, do you think?”

  Esther shrugged. “I don’t know. Lightning? I’m not sure where the fire was when I ran into the cabin.”

  “When you ran into—” Griff’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. “Where were you?”

  “I was in the barn. There was a leak in the roof, so I went for a bucket and then heard the cat in labor.”

  “So you went to help, of course?” His eyes were soft as they gazed down at her.

  She licked suddenly dry lips. “She didn’t need me, but I wanted to be there. New life—” She lowered her gaze to her blistered palms, considerably better for the salve. “It’s beautiful to see happen. I mean, it’s messy, but it’s . . . special.”

  “I think you—” He touched her face. “Tell me exactly what happened after that.” His voice was tight, his body tense.

  Esther’s brows arched. “I, um, smelled smoke and went hunting for the source.”

  His hand dropped to one of hers. “Did you know your room was burning before you went in?”

  “Yes, but I had to save something of mine. It’s all I have and—”

  “You went into a burning building for things?” His eyes glittered, sparkled like moonlight—or was it firelight?—on broken glass. “That was right idiotic of you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I’m all right and have some things. But Griff—” She leaned away from a sudden intensity in his gaze. “I didn’t tell you. With everything else, I forgot to tell you that something broke that window before the fire started.”

  “You mean someone.” He spun away on his heel and began to pace the kitchen. “I knew it. I knew something was just wrong about that fire. And if you’d been there—” He swung toward her, wrapped his arms around her, and held her close. “That fire wasn’t set by no lightning strike. Someone set it o’purpose.”

  “I know.” She was shaking, and he held her more tightly. She could scarcely breathe and didn’t care. “But they didn’t want to kill me. Surely they didn’t want to kill me. No one hates me that much. Please—”

  “Shh.” He tilted her head back and kissed her, drawing away slowly at the sound of footfalls outside the kitchen door. He smiled. “One way to stop you from talking too much.”

  “I don’t talk too much.”

  “No, ma’am, sometimes you don’t talk enough, but talk now.” He glanced past her. “Bethann, are you all right?”

  “Right enough.” She stepped into the kitchen. “I wanta hear about how that fire got started. It were a Brooks, weren’t it?”

  “We can’t reach that conclusion.” Griff caught Esther’s gaze. “Your trouble back home didn’t follow you here, did it?”

  “No.”

  “There was that note,” he pointed out.

  “I think Hannah wrote it.”

  “Hannah!” the two Tollivers exclaimed.

  “Why would Hannah want rid of you?” Griff asked.

  Esther told them of her conversation with Hannah while she busied herself replacing the lid on the jar of ointment and stowing it in her bag. “She seemed distressed about something, but while I was there these past two weeks, she was . . . friendly. She’s also—” She paused. That wasn’t something she should share. />
  The Tollivers looked at her expectantly.

  “Nothing important. The menfolk aren’t around much, is all.”

  And Henry Gosnoll barely spoke to his wife.

  “I’m going over there.” Griff strode to the door, his face a taut mask, expression inscrutable.

  Esther gazed down at the dress whose skirt ended at the top of her boots. “I’d like to go too and ensure Zach is healing well.”

  And ensure Griff didn’t do something stupid.

  “If you’ll wait long enough for me to change my dress,” she concluded.

  Bethann said nothing. She simply walked out of the house and across the yard, still appearing weak, but her head high.

  “I’ll wait.” He followed his sister from the house, then crossed the yard to the burned-out schoolhouse.

  Esther snatched her dress off the line and ran upstairs to change. How she would love a bath or a swim before donning the clean clothes. No time to concern herself about that. Griff might not wait for her. The day was wasting if they wanted to get over the ridge before sundown.

  Perhaps she should stop him from going. He couldn’t ride up and make accusations against Hannah without trouble.

  Esther’s fingers stilled on the hooks at her neck. Making trouble. Someone had been trying to make trouble between the families since Griff had been ambushed on the road east. Everyone denied it. Yet someone was guilty. Bethann wanting revenge for being jilted again? Zach or Hannah? Griff? None should have any kind of reason for wanting trouble. They should want peace. Someone did not.

  Heart heavy, Esther descended the steps to find Griff waiting for her with saddled horses. As though she weighed nothing, he lifted her onto the mare’s back, then mounted and led the way up the track toward the Brookses’ compound.

  Riding single file on separate mounts, they couldn’t talk quietly enough to keep their voices from ringing through the forest. Esther kept pondering how trouble could benefit anyone. Hannah had won over Bethann in getting the husband. Zach and Griff were friends. Or had been friends until she came along. Now they seemed at odds, trying to outdo one another in giving her attention. At least Zach had. Griff hadn’t really pursued her. He had seen to her welfare. He had taught her the dulcimer because she wanted him to. But Zach had pursued her. Every time she and Griff seemed to be edging toward a line between friendship and courtship, Zach grew ardent in his attentions as though—