“What did he say? I want to hear every word!” Marian tapped her fingertips together and emitted a short squeal. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this!”
Olivia rolled her eyes, but a smile broke her affectation. “Oh, all right. Last week when he walked me home from your house, I asked him if I could count on his loyalty in friendship, and he said that I had it and so much more if only I would let him.”
“That’s promising.” Marian nodded briskly. “And what else?”
“This afternoon, he wanted to help me.”
“With what?”
“He saw that I was upset and he wanted to fix it. Not fix it as he would with a broken piece of furniture, but he wanted to come to my aid. He said he cares about me. It wasn’t just what he said but how he looked when he said it. And he notices the smallest details about me. I know that doesn’t mean he is in love with me—”
“Oh, but he is! He has been for so long, but you never showed any interest. Jonah said you never would come around, but I knew you would.” Marian beamed. “It appears my husband owes me a dollar.”
“You can’t mean it.”
“Of course not. His money is no good here.” Marian waved her hand vigorously. “Never mind that. Gabriel has been in love with you for years. The question is how do you feel about him?”
“I don’t know.”
Marian hooked an arm through hers. “Will you tell me when you do know?”
“Of course. You’re my dearest friend,” she said as they started walking toward the campfire, arms linked. “Your opinion matters more to me than any other. If you say he is trustworthy, then I will give him a chance.”
Marian raised her chin. “That is all I ask,” she said with an exaggerated formal tone, and they both laughed.
When near the fire, one by one each of the others turned to look at them. A flash of jealousy moved across Peggy’s face, and she stepped closer to Henry. He stepped away. Jonah walked toward Marian, possessive pride igniting his grin.
Gabe caught Olivia’s gaze and held it. The last light in the western sky faded behind him and the fire highlighted his profile. He lowered the handful of kindling to his side. His hands were always holding something—a hammer, an ax, kindling—but could she trust them to hold her heart?
She felt Marian release her arm and heard her and Jonah exchange sweet whispers, but all she could focus on was the man standing before her. As she moved into the circle of log benches, a comfortable grin warmed his expression. Her feet walked toward him even as her mind cautioned each step.
He held an open palm to the bench beside him. “I saved you a seat.”
“How thoughtful.”
“I’m always thinking of—” He briefly glanced away.
Jonah and Marian were mid-smooch. Peggy was trying to figure out how to sit elegantly on a log while wearing a corset. Henry was shaving the bark off a gray leaf stick with his pocketknife. No one was paying them any attention. So why had Gabe stopped himself?
Olivia sat on the bench. “Thinking of what?”
He tossed the kindling to the sand near the campfire and lowered himself to the bench beside her. “I was going to say that I’m always thinking of you, because it’s true, but last time I said that, it offended you.”
“You said you hoped tonight was not like old times. I agree.”
He was close enough to block the ocean wind, but not close enough to make her uncomfortable in front of the others. She shifted to face him squarely. “If your thoughtfulness is sincere, I’ve been a fool to be offended by it.”
“I am sincere, Liv.” Concern marked his brow. “I do care about you. And you are no fool.”
The others had gone quiet. Olivia felt their watching eyes and hoped no one had heard his sweet words. If only they could go somewhere to talk alone.
Jonah flashed a crooked smile at Gabe. “Tell the girls what you and Mr. Weathermon caught in the stream last week.”
Gabe leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “We caught a shark.”
Olivia felt her jaw fall open.
“A shark?” Marian gasped.
Peggy put her hand to her bosom. “In the big stream? Where the children swim in the summertime?”
Gabe nodded. “We’ve seen them in the estuary south of the settlement before, but this one ventured upstream.”
Marian drew her head back. “How big was it?”
Gabe spread his palms wide, one hand coming in front of Olivia. “It was just a baby. Still big enough to bite a man’s hand off if it wanted to. Or a woman’s.”
Marian’s eyes widened. Peggy gave a dramatic shiver. Henry and Jonah laughed at the ladies’ adverse reaction.
As Gabe recounted the details of helping Mr. Weathermon get the shark off his fishing line, he took Olivia’s fingertips in his hand. He didn’t look at her or draw attention to the simple gesture. He kept his lively story animated with enough detail to make the women squirm and the men comment as if they had witnessed the event themselves.
Olivia tried to listen, to focus on his words and their friends, but as she sat there, fingers covertly entwined with his, her thoughts blurred. This man sincerely cared for her. She searched her heart and found confirmation she cared for him too. But she wasn’t in love, at least not how other women described the feeling. Why couldn’t she be a normal woman?
Why had she suddenly allowed this to matter? It didn’t matter whether she was capable of falling in love or not because she’d sworn never to allow it. She was devoted to teaching children, not making them. But it wasn’t her mission to teach that forced her to be different. She was different. She had an inexplicable flaw, and just as Doctor Ashton had told her when she was young, people didn’t accept what they couldn’t understand. The thorn in her side would have to remain hidden.
If she allowed Gabe to court her, it might lead to marriage. Wasn’t that the point of courting? If she married, he’d find out about the word blindness. Or she’d have to tell him. What if it was something that could be passed on to their children? The mental imagine of a cabin full of fussy, word blind children made her cringe. There she was in the middle of a cramped kitchen, sweating over a stove, explaining to her disappointed husband that he’d married a defective woman and now he had a house full of defective children.
Their children. She shook her head at the thought. One touch from a man who cared about her and she was contemplating having a family with him. She was getting ahead of herself.
She had to slow her thoughts down. He cared about her, and she liked him enough to give him a chance. That’s all. She knew how to keep the thorn in her side hidden.
Sitting there, beneath the oval moon, skin touching skin, her self-deprecating thoughts churned as violently as the fierce ocean nearby. The torrent clouded her mind. The only thing she knew for certain was that if she tried to read a page right now there was no way she would be able to see the words. But it didn’t matter. For now she didn’t have to read or learn or label anything. She only had to allow her heart to consider something it never had.
Chapter Seven
“No, Richie, come back with that!” Olivia yelled at her nine-year-old brother as he sneaked away from the kitchen table. When he complied, she pulled their mother’s sewing scissors from his hand and closed the blades. “You must stop playing with scissors. You have already ruined Alice’s ribbons and Walter’s suspenders. I dare not think what else.”
Richie wrinkled his freckled nose. “I like cutting things.”
“When you are done with your schoolwork, ask Father’s permission to use the old shears and cut something productive out-of-doors.” She patted the back of the kitchen chair where he was supposed to be sitting. “But you aren’t leaving the table again until you finish your equations.”
Across the wooden table, Martha eyed her. Boredom flattened Martha’s face. “Maybe he is drawn to sharp objects because these lessons are so dull.”
“That’s very clever, Martha.” Olivia f
licked her youngest sister a scowl and opened a grammar book. “Since you’re so fond of wordplay, copy these two pages of verbs in simple present tense and write the correct past participle form beside each word.”
Almeda snickered at Martha’s assignment until her gaze met Olivia’s. She tucked her chin and returned to her essay writing. The sound of pencils scratching paper whispered through the Owenses’ kitchen. Their lesson time might end productively after all.
In haste to start her day, Olivia had left her silver watch pin upstairs. She didn’t need a clock to know when it was noon. Her siblings, like all of her students, could be depended on to exuberantly announce when class time was over. Then they would scatter from the table as if sitting there to write one more answer would bring on boils. The settlement’s children only had class one half-day per week and complained for most of it, except some of the younger ones like Jane Cotter, Sarah Ashton, and Doris Vestal. In only four weeks of teaching, Olivia knew who her favorite pupils would be.
While Almeda, Martha, and Richie worked on their assignments, Olivia paced to the back door. She tried not to take it personally when students complained about their assignments. They didn’t know how hard she had to work to prepare lessons. Most of them had heard their parents complain about schoolwork taking up time, and so they complained too.
Teaching from house to house was only reinforcing the opinion that formal education was an imposition. And that attitude reinforced her opinion that it would take a dedicated schoolhouse and a habit of daily class times to build respect for education in the settlement.
She had left the matter alone for nearly a month while teaching in homes and allowing the children to adjust to having her as their schoolteacher. Gazing through the circular window in the back door, she watched her father and Walter traipse toward the house for lunch. It was time to resume her cause. She wiped a smudge from the former porthole glass and steeled herself for her next battle.
As soon as the first boot step hit the porch, Richie sprang from his seat. “They’re home! It’s noon!”
“We’re done with school!” Almeda sang.
Martha clapped her book shut. “Hallelujah, we are saved.”
Footsteps thudded up the staircase as the children raced to put away their schoolbooks. Olivia rolled her eyes. “Class dismissed.” Her deflated mumble was lost on the empty room.
Richard Sr. opened the back door, but stayed outside while he removed his muddy boots. “Have you got lunch together yet, Livy?”
She shook her head. “I just finished teaching. Mother said she would make lunch when she came back from the coop.”
Richard furrowed his brow. “What is she doing out there?”
“Checking the wire. A hen was missing again today.”
Walter squeezed past their father. “At least the cow has milk again.”
Before her brother made it inside, Richard pulled on his arm. “Fetch a pail of water from the well, son.”
“Yes, sir.” Walter grabbed an empty bucket and jumped from the porch.
“He’s eager to please today.” Olivia glanced at her father as she reached into the cabinet beside the door. “He must have enjoyed clearing land for Gabriel this morning.”
Richard stepped inside, looking more pleasant than usual. “The building site is cleared. Has been for a week. We were hewing lumber for the house today.”
She missed seeing Gabe around the village. His land wasn’t visible from the road, and he hadn’t been at the McIntosh house when she taught there. She only saw him at church on Sundays, and then his younger siblings vied for his attention. They had missed him all week too.
Though she had mentioned his handholding to Marian, no one else seemed the wiser about his sweet gesture. Many times since the campfire on the beach she’d recalled the warmth of having her hand in his. Maybe one day they would spend more time together, maybe not, but for now the memory of his affection gave her a spark of happiness on otherwise dreary days. Recalling his touch was insidiously impractical, but undeniably delightful.
She snapped herself from her reverie and peeled back the tea towel covering the breadbasket. “There is plenty of bread for lunch, Father. I’ll make biscuits in the Dutch to go with dinner.”
“Sounds good.” Richard flashed a rare grin. “Gabriel spoke to me this morning.”
She paused as she drew tin plates from the cupboard. “Spoke to you? I should imagine he speaks to everyone who helps with the work on his house.”
“This was about you.”
“Oh.” She carried the stack of plates to the table. Her brothers and sisters would return any moment. She didn’t know if Gabe planned to further their relationship and certainly didn’t want anyone else knowing, at least not yet. “Quickly then. What did he say?”
Richard eyed the staircase, seeming to understand her urgency. “He asked for my blessing.”
“To marry me?” A plate slipped as she lowered the stack to table. She jumped at the dull clank of tin. “That’s a little premature.”
Richard steadied her with a fatherly hand. It was the most attention he’d paid her in months. “He admires you and needed to state his intentions to me.”
“How very presumptuous.”
“Very honorable, more like. It’s the right thing to do between men. Gabriel understands these things, and I respect him for it. He will make a good husband for you.”
Gabe had said he cared about her, and she’d decided to accept his compliments as sincere. They had shared one sweet moment four weeks ago. It led her to daydream what-ifs, but that was a long way from marriage. Maybe her father had misunderstood Gabriel’s gregarious nature. “Did he actually say he is planning to propose marriage?”
Richard gave the light chuckle of a father amused by his naïve daughter. “He didn’t have to. He is building a house. Bachelors don’t build multiple-room homes, they build one-room cabins.”
“We aren’t courting.”
“You didn’t think he planned to live there alone, did you?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. I admire him. He cares for me, but we have no further understanding between us. We are both occupied with our work. There simply isn’t time for more.” Not to mention she didn’t want to marry unless she was in love—whatever that meant—and he wouldn’t want her if he knew about her impairment anyway.
She traced a finger around and around the edge of the tin lunch plates. So many worries wrestled for her attention. Someone or something was stealing from them. She had to shoulder complaints about lessons from students and parents, dodge Mrs. Cotter’s impolite behavior, and teach the Vestal children while Susanna lay ill and the twins ran Hannah ragged. Then, whenever the monster allowed her to see the written word, she had to customize her lesson plans for the inconvenient teaching arrangement she’d been forced into. The last thing she wanted was to take care of a husband and have his babies. Not now and maybe not ever.
She had given Gabriel McIntosh a cup, and he wanted a gallon.
And she couldn’t be bothered with the distraction. “I can’t think about marriage right now. Gabe can build his big home, but if he wants to build anything for me, it should be a schoolhouse.”
“Not that again.” Richard groaned, and his usual petulance returned. “I thought you would be happy that a man wants to marry you. You could have a family of your own.”
“I don’t see the point in making more children when the village refuses to prioritize educating the ones we have. Please mention building a schoolhouse during the elder meeting tonight.”
Foot beats pattered the stairs as her siblings came back down. The back door opened, and Walter set a pail of water on the floor. Their mother was behind him with a sour expression.
Richard shook his head at Olivia. “I wholeheartedly gave him my blessing. I don’t see how you could want for more.”
* * *
Olivia waited until nine o’clock, hoping that would give the men enough time in their elder meeting to fini
sh their pertinent business. Though not so much time that they would be too tired to hear her plea.
Under the pall of night, she slipped out the kitchen door and onto the road. After a glance back at her family’s home, she tightened her shawl and hurried to the moonlit chapel. She should have prepared a formal speech to ensure she used all the modes of persuasion. Her passion for education had driven her this far, and she would have to rely on it to evoke emotion, establish credibility, and appeal to the logic of the village elders.
Even though it had done nothing to persuade her father.
She was alone in the darkness of night while all the other women were in their homes, mending or reading by lamplight. Children were tucked in their cozy beds. The elders were behind the closed doors of the chapel, making decisions that affected everyone else.
The road’s sandy gravel crunched beneath her boots no matter how nimbly she stepped. As she passed the path to Jonah and Marian’s house, the scamper of some small creature startled her. Twigs crackled in the blackened brush. Her eyes darted from one side of the road to the other, and she picked up her pace.
The cold evening air carried the scent of rain, but the moon was still visible between passing clouds. As she climbed the stone steps to the chapel, she turned back to check the sky to the east over the ocean. Lightning flickered in the distance. Though the water couldn’t be seen for the gray leaf trees, virescent light pulsed beneath the clouds. She had an hour at most until the storm rolled ashore.
Before Olivia gripped the door handle, she raised her heels and peeked through the narrow window in the arched door. Made from the planks of the Providence, the heavy wooden door still smelled like the sea and sweat and fear. Perhaps the stench of fear wasn’t coming from the wood.
She shouldn’t be here.
The isolated settlement had few rules and no formal government, but if the village had an unwritten law it was this: women should never enter a meeting of the village elders.
It hadn’t mattered to her until her problem went unaddressed by the all-male elder council. Now she found their rule primitive and misogynistic. If they simply wanted one representative from each family, they could make the rule state the eldest child would inherit the position. Of course, that would only glorify age over gender, but then she would be in training to be the next representative for her family. She would be included in the meetings instead of being the girl at the door, dithering while grasping to justify her assertive plan.
The Uncharted Beginnings Series Box Set Page 30