Choices of the Heart (16 page)

When she returned to the kitchen, the potatoes and ham sizzled in their pans, and Brenna stomped around the table setting out plates and flatware.

“There’s a stain on your dress,” Brenna announced.

Esther scowled at the blotch as though its presence were its own fault. “Blood is difficult to get out of cotton.”

“Blood?” Liza squealed.

Brenna’s eyebrows rose. “How’d you get blood on your dress?”

She shouldn’t have said that.

“I got too close to someone who was bleeding.” Esther hedged the response only a little.

“I can fix it,” Liza said. “We can cover it up with some ruffles down the front. Wouldn’t that be pretty?”

“Fit for a party.”

Why hadn’t she thought of that? Ruffles, some braiding, any number of decorations would have covered up the blood. Surely she didn’t need that kind of reminder keeping her from making better use of her gown. And wearing the dress with its stain wasn’t right in this neat-as-a-pin house and equally well-groomed inhabitants.

Female inhabitants anyway. The four Tolliver males came in, all grimy, uncombed, glowing from their morning’s exertions, even Mr. Tolliver.

“Wash before you come to the table,” she commanded, without thinking that she spoke to her employers and students.

She looked at her own hands. Clean. Good. She must be an example. They had hired her to be a good example of civilization so their children could go out and find their place in the world and not be shunned for their rough talk or appearance.

“Where’s Momma?” Jack asked.

“Busy,” Esther said. “She left me in charge of breakfast and everyone.”

“Including me?” Griff flashed her his heart-stuttering grin.

“If you want to eat, yes.” She frowned back at him.

He smiled wider. “What if I just—” He reached for a slice of ham Liza was lifting from the pan.

She smacked his wrist with her heavy, two-tined fork. “You leave that ’lone, Griffin Tolliver. I ain’t gonna throw no food away because your filthy hands touched it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He snatched his hand back and glowered at Esther. “You teaching backtalk to my sisters?”

“I didn’t need to teach them. I’m going to try to unteach them.”

“You’re gonna need my prayers with this lot.” Chuckling, Griff departed from the kitchen.

“I’m a good student,” Liza said, “when I can get schooling.”

“I don’t want no schooling.” Brenna slammed forks onto the table. “I wanta get married and have a house bigger than this and real silverware.”

“You need to be older,” Esther said.

“And find someone who’d want to marry you,” Liza added.

“I don’t think she will,” Ned piped up from the doorway.

“Are your hands clean, Mr. Ned?” Esther reached out to take the child’s hands in hers. She pronounced them fine, and he charged to the table.

Mrs. Tolliver descended carrying an empty tankard. She nodded at Esther and took her place at the table along with everyone else gathering. Mr. Tolliver asked the blessing in his quiet, deep voice, and bowls and platters began to fly about so quickly Esther hoped no one noticed she didn’t take a serving of porridge.

When everyone was eating, she asked, “When would you like me to start teaching?”

“Soon as you can.” Mrs. Tolliver wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and Esther cringed. “Can’t do it all day like some places, which is why we’re wanting you here now.”

“I thought as much.” Esther toyed with a bit of ham. “I’ll need some time to work out my lessons. Today is Friday. Would a week from Monday be soon enough?”

Mrs. Tolliver nodded. Mr. Tolliver’s face twisted as though a spasm of pain had coursed through him.

“Are four hours a day good enough?” Esther continued.

“Four hours!” the youngest three children cried.

“That’ll do.” Mrs. Tolliver nodded. “And maybe a bit extra to my girls for—what’s it called? Portment?”

“Deportment.” Esther glanced at the girls.

Liza leaned forward. “What’s that?”

“Teaching you how to walk and talk and carry on conversation.”

“I know how to carry on conversation.” Brenna screwed up her face and started talking with an affected accent. “I seen a lady in town who was oh-so-fine she stuck her nose in the air and tripped because she couldn’t see where she was going.”

Everyone laughed except for Griff. He leaned forward and tapped his sister’s arm. “The word is
saw
, brat. You
saw
a lady in town. That’s what you need to learn how to talk like.”

Brenna flushed. “I forgot, you beast. I hate you.” She slammed her chair back hard enough to send it toppling, then ran from the room.

“Griff, you shouldn’t have embarrassed your sister like that,” Mr. Tolliver said. “She hasn’t had much schooling.”

“She can read, but she doesn’t try.” Griff sighed and rose. “If you excuse me, I’ll go apologize.”

He left the room and a silent table. No one looked at Esther. Blaming her for the conflict? They probably hadn’t cared about grammar before she arrived.

“So, Miss Cherrett,” Liza said too brightly, “do you have a pretty dress for the Independence Day celebration? If you don’t, I can help fix one up for you. We got time.”

“Perhaps—” Esther swallowed a sudden lump in her throat at the unexpected offer of feminine kindness. “I’d like that. You can look and see if I have anything appropriate.”

She had celebrated the last Fourth of July with her family and a young seminary student helping Papa for the summer. The family threw them together so much that Esther suspected their intentions. But the shy young man never looked her in the eye without blushing. Annoyed, she’d stopped speaking to him.

Her conscience pricked her. If she treated all males that way, no wonder she was twenty-four and never so much as engaged.

Heavy-hearted, she stood and began to gather up the dishes. Mrs. Tolliver offered a protest, but with Brenna still gone, Liza had no help.

“I’ll go see to Brenna and Griff.” Mr. Tolliver rose and exited from the house with his stiff-legged gait.

With Liza chattering about her Fourth of July dress and how she could put her hair up this year, the cleanup flew by. Brenna never reappeared, but Bethann slipped into the kitchen and served herself a tiny amount of food. It was food nonetheless, and an equally tiny thrill of pleasure at the sight ran through Esther.

Finished with the cleaning up, Esther returned to her cabin with Liza, where they sorted through her few gowns until Liza declared that a white one with tiny blue flowers patterned across it was perfect.

“Now then,” Liza announced with a sideways glance, “we need to get you an escort. Should I ask my brother to invite you?”

The clenching thrill that usually only accompanied his smile, his touch, the sound of his sonorous voice, leaped through Esther at Liza’s suggestion, and a “No!” burst from her.

“You don’t like my brother?” Liza asked slowly. “Or do you like Zach more?”

Esther didn’t answer such a direct and potentially dangerous question. She began to return her dresses to their hooks behind a curtain along one wall of her room and talked to Liza about her hair for the celebration. “Do you have ribbons?”

The question distracted the young woman from talk of an escort for Esther. The celebration was more than a month away, after all. Much could change between now and then.

Talk of hair ribbons and her own mention of the day at breakfast reminded Esther of home, of the family readying itself for Sunday. Papa would be practicing his sermon in his study. Esther should be with the choir working on Sunday’s music, though she hadn’t sung before the congregation since January. She’d been gone for a month now. They would be looking for her. Perhaps Zach and Hannah had left some clues behind. They couldn’t arrive in a town as small as Seabourne without a few people noticing them. Yet some people—too many of them—in the village wouldn’t help the Cherretts find their prodigal daughter. They would consider her absence welcome.

“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.”