Blinded by the snow and deafened by the wind, she dropped the useless lantern and moved forward, holding her head down and one hand out. “Please, God, lead me to safety.” The words slipped from her chattering lips as she pressed forward, following her boot prints away from the water. Only when she stepped in one print did the next print come into view.
Her wet and tingling toes felt numb inside her ice-laden boots. If she could make it back to Mr. Weathermon’s home, she would be fine. His cabin was warm, and he was far more amiable than she’d expected. He would shelter her for the night. With each step she thought of her family, her students, the community that needed her, the new schoolhouse she’d worked so hard for, Gabe…
Marian had said Gabe was working in the schoolhouse. He would have seen the blizzard coming and possessed better sense than to walk home in these conditions. He’d probably gone to his family’s house for the night. Maybe he would come looking for her in the morning. They all would. And there she’d lie, frozen and blue, the senseless word blind teacher girl.
No! She could not think that way. Her aching feet found one more boot print to follow, then another. She would make it back to Mr. Weathermon’s and have a harrowing tale to tell. He’d scoff at her, but years from now, on a cold and windy night, children would ask her to recount the time she’d gotten lost in the blizzard. They would gather around and turn the lamps down low while she told the story slowly, hoping to scare them into having a better fear of the elements than she’d had.
Her old footprints became harder to decipher, each one more blown and buried than the last. The wind carried a faint whiff of smoke, but from where?
Her trembling muscles burned deep inside. She forced each step until no more prints were visible. Reaching her hands out in all directions, she found a tree trunk. Her quaking knees gave out and she fell against the rough pine bark. She walked her hands along the bark, trying to get a grip and pull herself up, but the trunk curved unnaturally. Her hands followed the bend in the trunk. It was the bent pine tree marking the split in the path. She was close to Gabe’s cabin. He wouldn’t be there, but if she could make it inside, she could light the fire and survive the night.
The unflinching wind beat against her as she clung to the tree. Her body refused to move. It shook violently from within, sickening her exhausted frame.
“Gabe!” she called, knowing he wouldn’t hear. “Gabe!” Her burning voice cried again and again. Knowing it might be her last word, she gathered every ounce of air in her lungs and tried again. “Gabriel!”
A clap resounded nearby. Fearing a snow-laden limb had cracked, she curled her arms around her legs and cowered close to the bent pine. A rhythmic swishing sound repeated beneath the harsh drone of the wind. The sound grew louder, closer.
“Liv?” A voice called. “Olivia? Say something if you can hear me.”
“Over here.” Her voice broke as she tried to yell. “Gabe! I’m by the bent pine.”
Hearing boots crunch snow in rapid stride, she tried to stand. Her cold knees wouldn’t straighten, her skirts stiffened with ice.
Gabe scooped her from the snow. “I’ve got you,” he said as he lifted her away from the bent pine.
The slanted line of falling snow went vertical. She buried her face against his warm shoulder as he carried her to his cabin. His woolen coat smelled of lumber and soap and wood smoke and man. Heat radiated from his neck. He’d been inside by a roaring fire, not walking home in the blizzard, not working at the schoolhouse.
His steady and confident stride made her feel foolish for getting lost in the first place. He could see fine in the dark or he knew the way so well the wind and snow didn’t disorient him. These were his woods.
Allowing her eyes to close, she tried to relax in his arms. A moment later, he stopped abruptly and pushed a door open. The warmth inside his house tingled her icy cheeks. She tried to speak but her shivering jaw felt anchored shut.
He set her down on a block chair just inside the door of the lamp lit kitchen. “Get your boots off.”
When he closed the door, the wind lost its deadly grip on her soul. The scent of stew added to the warmth. “Gabe…” she hummed, content simply to be indoors. “Thank you.”
“They look wet.” He arched a worried eyebrow at her feet as he shook the snow from his coat and hung it on a peg by the door. “Are they wet?”
“Hm?”
“Your boots, your stockings? Are they wet?”
She reached for her shoelaces, but her frozen fingers wouldn’t pinch the ends to untie them. “So cold.”
Gabe dropped to his knees in front of her and quickly untied the leather laces. Panic edged his voice. “How long were you out there?”
“I d-don’t know. A while.”
He gripped her shin with one warm hand and used the other to tug off her wet boot. “Liv, your skin is freezing.”
She didn’t want to think about frozen things or look at her icy clothes or ever hear the wind again. She cast her gaze about the messy room. Though it was meant to serve as a kitchen someday, it lacked a table and stove. A fluffy new mattress—the handiwork of Mrs. Ashton no doubt—lay on the floor near the stone hearth of the fireplace her father and Walter had built. She knew Gabe was living in his house while he finished it and worked on the school, but she’d never imagined what that would look like.
But at present, it was hard to imagine anything. A wave of fatigue dropped her head back against the wall. “I can’t feel my toes.”
“Why were you walking in a blizzard?”
“I took bread to Mr. Weathermon.”
“You shouldn’t have in this weather.”
Her teeth ached from chattering. “It was b-barely snowing when I left Marian’s.”
“Jonah should have stopped you.”
“I’m a grown woman—”
“Who almost got herself killed,” he interrupted with his volume raised. “You are freezing. Your lips are blue. Your clothes are covered in ice and snow. What were you thinking?”
She pulled her head away from the wall. “Why are you angry?”
“I’m not angry.” He peeled her frozen stocking from her skin and then took off the other boot. His voice softened. “This foot is worse than the other.”
“I stepped in water.” She looked at her hands. Melting snow caked the folds of her black leather gloves. She tried to pull them off one finger at a time but moved too slowly for Gabe’s concern.
Without a word, he took her hands and slid the gloves off her icy fingers. “Oh, Olivia, no.”
“What?”
He rubbed her hands in his and blew hot air into them. “We have to warm you up.”
“I’m f-fine, really.”
“Look at your feet.”
“They’re white.”
“Too white.” He traced a finger across the top of her foot. “Can you feel this?”
“No.”
He unwrapped the crackly shawl from her shoulders. “Take your coat off.”
“Won’t I warm up faster if I stay bundled?”
“No. It’s wet. Take it off,” he ordered as he tossed her shawl to the top of a trunk, “and your dress.”
The improper suggestion snapped her alert. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your virtue isn’t at stake here, but your health is.”
“What will people think?”
“That I saved your life.” The gravity of his care kept his eyes dark and the line between his lips straight. “Your wet clothes are leeching the heat out of your body.” He moved to the fireplace and added logs to the blaze. “I’ll go and find you some clean clothes, but for now take off everything that’s wet, leave it by the door, and wrap yourself under there.” He pointed to the mass of quilts on the mattress by the hearth. “Feet nearest the fire. I’ll be right back.”
As he started for the staircase, she managed a rigid nod and waited for him to disappear upstairs before she began undressing. Though her fingers had lost most of their dexter
ity, she forced them to work the buttons. There was no way she’d ask him to undress her. After a moment of struggle, her dress and petticoat dropped to the floor. She left them in a melting heap by the door and scurried to the mattress by the hearth, wearing only her undergarments.
The wide and soft mattress enveloped her like a fresh pastry. She tugged one of the quilts over her shivering body and laid her head on the pillow. His pillow. The mattress smelled like him and also faintly like the Ashtons’ cinnamon-scented home. The mattress hadn’t been here long—probably part of a trade for the work Gabe had done on their house.
She pulled the quilt up to her ears and stretched her feet down the mattress toward the hearth, like he’d told her to. The bed’s temperature matched the room, but it was still warmer than her skin. She swished her legs on the bedsheet to create warmth, but exhausted quickly. When she went still, the only sound in the house came from pops and crackles of the fire.
Footsteps descended the stairs, but Olivia didn’t look. She’d have to crane her neck, and her aching head was close to comfortable on the pillow.
“Here’s a clean night shirt,” he said, setting a folded flannel garment on the corner of the mattress. “And a pair of ridiculously long socks my sister knitted for me years ago.” The socks unfolded as he held them up by the cuffs.
“You’re right.”
“Long, aren’t they?”
“And ridiculous.”
He grinned, looking like himself for a moment—causal, open, confident, alluring. A man she could easily spend her life with. His serious expression quickly returned, as did the urgency in his movements. He shook open a second quilt, covered her with it, and tucked it around her the way a parent tucks in a child.
She watched his face as he rubbed her feet. He’d saved her life tonight. She was safe with him. Safe to love him. Safe to let him love her. But even though her heart knew it, her mind refused to give up its guard.
A strange sensation tingled the soles of her feet. Before she could say anything, her toes and the skin on top of her feet felt as if she were being pricked with one thousand needles. With a sharp wince, she sat up and curled her feet into her body.
Gabe’s hands shot up. “What’s wrong?”
She held the quilt to her chin with one hand and squeezed her stinging feet with the other. “Pins and needles.”
He lowered his hands. “That’s a good thing.”
“It doesn’t feel good.”
“It means you’re getting the feeling back.”
“Oh, good.” She relaxed a little, but felt silly. She sent him a rueful smile. “So, I will live after all?”
His grin returned. “Yeah, you will live.”
Chapter Eighteen
On Olivia’s last day teaching in the Cotter house, she had to fold her excited hands behind her back to keep them still. When her hands went still, her stomach fluttered. Glee from the happy anticipation of never having to come back to this house mixed with dread from the hateful glares of the older Cotter girls.
If only little Jane and Conrad would finish their exam quickly so she could collect their papers and leave. She hadn’t been able to read a word all morning and there was no way she’d be able to read their handwritten exams here now.
Peggy sat in a kitchen chair. She focused on her lace-making cushion, seeming blissfully ignorant of her sisters’ rude behavior nearby. Her fingers left the lace long enough to smooth her perfectly quaffed hair. She flashed Olivia a pretty smile. “I declare you are a good schoolteacher.”
“That’s very gracious,” Olivia whispered, hoping Peggy would take the hint and keep her voice down until the children were done writing.
She considered Peggy’s kind remark. Such words were infrequent from her these days. It wasn’t always that way. Peggy was once one of her dearest friends, not simply for lack of options, as it seemed since coming to this land. When they were girls—before the drive to get male attention overtook Peggy’s manners—they often spent the night at each other’s houses, staying up late, giggling and playing. Olivia missed the freedom in friendship that made those times enjoyable. She glanced back at Peggy and whispered. “I appreciate your saying so.”
One of the older girls snickered at her from the kitchen. The three of them whispered to each other then went out the back door. Olivia didn’t relax until the door closed behind them. They met Mrs. Cotter in the yard. Peggy returned her attention to her lace.
Olivia thanked God it was her last day here. She’d never expected a family who was once close to hers to be the dread of her week. Though Mr. Cotter was an elder and a good man, he was busy building his stables and breeding horses and teaching the work to his eldest son. Mrs. Cotter had changed the most and seemed to have taken three of her five daughters with her on the path to unrighteousness. Perhaps Olivia could be a strong enough influence in Jane’s life that she might remain the one Cotter woman capable of dependable kindness.
Jane laid down her pencil, regaining Olivia’s attention. “Are you finished with your exam, Jane?” she asked.
Jane nodded.
“Excellent. Sit quietly and wait for your brother to finish,” she whispered. “This is how it will be when we are all in the schoolhouse together next week.”
A few minutes later, Conrad smacked his pencil on his paper. “Done!” he exclaimed, dropping both arms as if answering the essay question had taken away all of his strength.
Olivia collected the children’s papers. “I’ll grade these tonight and see you in class next Monday.”
“Thank you, Miss Owens,” the children said in practiced unison and dashed outside to play.
Peggy stood from the kitchen chair and fluffed the ruffles at her sleeves. The smell of feminine power clung to the air around her. She lowered her dainty fingers to the table and picked up Jane’s exam paper. “My, she has come a long way with your teaching.”
“Yes, I’m very proud of her.” Olivia collected Conrad’s paper and pencil and waited for Peggy to hand her the other exam.
“Look how sweet. She wrote that her favorite animal in the settlement is the jackrabbit because… something about its ears…” Peggy pointed a knuckle at a word on the paper. “What did she write here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll grade it tonight.”
“No, look at it now.” Peggy’s tone threatened a pout. “I want to know what she wrote.”
“I’m not sure what it says. She’s still learning cursive. I will have to take a closer look tonight when I have time.”
Peggy tilted her chin and studied Olivia for a moment. She looked at the paper again then raised an eyebrow. “Oh wait, I see what it says. Gracious, isn’t that the dearest thing! Read this part.”
Olivia flicked a glance at the inscrutable markings. “Yes, Jane is darling.”
“You didn’t read it.”
“Of course I did.”
“Then what does it say?”
Olivia swiped the paper from Peggy’s flimsy grip and studied the marks on the page. She couldn’t make out a single word. “She likes the jackrabbit’s ears.”
“I can’t believe it!” Peggy covered her mouth with her hand. “You can’t read, can you?”
Olivia’s fluttering stomach sank. Her chest felt hollow without it as if she had hidden her darkest secret within her retreating vital organs. She tried to bolster her voice. “What gave you that idea?”
“You are holding the paper upside down.” A wicked grin curved one edge of Peggy’s mouth and every ounce of beauty drained from her face. “After all of these years, I finally figured out what is so odd about you. You’re illiterate.”
“No, I’m not.” She reached for her satchel. “I’m in a hurry, that’s all. I must get to the Vestals’. I have to complete the examinations this week so I know where to begin our lessons as a class next week.”
Peggy inched closer. “Now that I think of it, you were always helping your mother with the other students in class, and making excuses for not r
eading aloud. You were actually getting them to read the words for you, weren’t you?”
Her thoughts scrambled for a defense, but all that came out was a stunted whisper. “I can read.”
Peggy cackled as she snatched the paper and flipped it right side up. “Then read this.”
Olivia would have grabbed her satchel and hurried out of the house, but her breath caught, her mind froze, and her pulse rang in her ears. The letters on the page resembled honeysuckle blowing on a scrolling vine more than words. “I can’t.”
Peggy’s voice cooed in mock sympathy. “Perhaps it is your eyesight? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Don’t be cruel.”
“Maybe you’re going blind.”
“I can see just fine.”
“Then why can’t you read this?”
“I don’t know.”
Peggy propped both fists on her corset-cinched waist. “Can you read at all?”
“Of course I can. Sometimes I just can’t see words.”
“What does that mean?”
Despite her racing heartbeat, she found the strength to coolly pack her satchel. “Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”
Peggy leaned forward. “I’d like to try.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m your friend.”
Olivia almost swallowed her tongue. “My friend? You were my friend. But something changed. You changed. You made me feel ugly and unwanted. I trusted you and you filled my head with lies.”
“Not so!”
“You’ve been lying to me about Gabe for years.”
“To protect you from him.”
“He has sincerely loved me since I was fifteen. You made me believe he couldn’t be trusted. You told me he laughed about me behind my back when really he loves me.”
Peggy’s top lip twitched and her voice rose with shrill volume. “He told me he loved me once too, and he’s been flirting with Frances and with Cecelia.”
The Uncharted Beginnings Series Box Set Page 40