Mending Horses (12 page)

Damn
. Had that boy been laying in ambush for him? Why wasn't he at the Ainesworths' helping Chester with his after-breakfast chores?

“Where she always is most mornings lately. Out riding Phizzy,” Jonathan said.

“Good. Then now's a proper time to talk to your cousin.”

“I'm just waiting for the right moment, son.” Jonathan couldn't count how many times he'd opened his mouth to talk to Sophie about Billy, but each time his heart had plummeted into his boots, and he'd never followed through. Why was it so hard to do what was right for the girl?

“We're leaving tomorrow,” Daniel persisted.

“I promise you, I'll talk to Sophie in a little while.”

“Talk to me about what?” Sophie came into the kitchen from the opposite side of the house, carrying a basket of eggs. Bits of straw clung to her skirt and apron, and a downy copper feather stuck to her cap, bobbing jauntily as she walked.

“Billy,” Daniel said before Jonathan had time to invent something else.

“Oh, yes. I've got a thing or two say to you about that boy.” She bustled into the kitchen like a mother hen taking over her roost. “What do you mean trotting him all over the countryside and not giving him proper schooling? He can barely write his own name.”

“It's not for want of trying.” Jonathan bowed his head. It never ceased to amaze him how quickly Sophie could make him feel like a ten-year-old caught with his fingers in the jam jar.

“Well, try harder. I taught you better than that, didn't I? Do you want that boy growing up ignorant?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I suggest you start doing something about it.” She poured some water into a bowl, then one by one, she put the eggs into the water, checking to see whether they floated or sank.

Jonathan cast a glance toward Daniel. Scowling, the boy made a sharp motion with his chin in Sophie's direction. Jonathan took a deep breath, as if preparing to plunge into an icy pond. “Sophie, you like Billy, don't you?”

“Yes, I do, even if he's a bit prickly. Though I can't say I blame him.” One of the eggs bobbed to the surface; she removed it from the water and placed it carefully in the slop bucket, so it wouldn't break and fill the room with a sulfurous stench. “He's had you to himself all spring and summer, and now this stranger comes in and takes all your attention. . . . Sorry, Daniel, nothing against you, but I imagine that's how Billy sees it.”

“The little devil barely speaks to me. He's been talking plenty to you, though,” Jonathan said. There was nary an evening this past week that Sophie's and Billy's heads hadn't been bowed together over that
Oliver Twist
book, or Sophie hadn't been plying the child with sweets and baked goods. It seemed as though every time Jonathan entered a room, Billy would make a point of complimenting Sophie or asking Eldad a question, and pointedly ignoring Jonathan.

“Only because he wants to make you jealous.” Another egg floated and was added to the slop bucket.

“What would you say to him staying here with you?”

Sophie nearly dropped an egg. Her fingers closed around it, and for a moment Jonathan thought she would crush it. But she collected herself and added it to the others. It sank—a good one.

“I know how much you've always hankered after a child,” he continued.

Sophie sat down and studied her hands, twisting her wedding ring around and around. “Yes, I did, but it wasn't meant to be. I reconciled myself to that a long time ago.”

“Well, here's your chance. If Billy stayed with you and Eldad, I'm sure he'd be brung up right.”

Sophie sat in silence for a long time, staring into the bowl of eggs as if it were a magician's crystal ball and she were trying to see her future.

Jonathan crossed the room and put a hand on his cousin's shoulder. “He already likes you.”

Sophie patted Jonathan's hand and shook her head. The feather tumbled from her cap into her lap. “He likes my cooking and having a clean bed to sleep in. He doesn't love me.”

“Maybe not yet, but he will. Just give him some time.”

“It's not fine living that Billy needs.” Sophie rose from her chair, her eyes moist. “Oh, Jonny, you're such an old fool.” She patted his cheek, her damp hand cool against his face. “Can't you see what's right before your eyes? He worships you.”

“Them sour looks he's been giving me seem like worship to you?”

“If he didn't love you, he wouldn't be jealous. He'd like nothing better than to be just like you.”

Then God help her
, Jonathan thought. “You know I'm not fit to raise a child, Soph.”

“You love him, don't you?”

“I couldn't love him better if he was my own son.” And that was exactly the problem, wasn't it? Daniel was right; it was a son he'd made of her, not a daughter. “But what sort'a life is it for him to be traipsing around the countryside with a damn fool peddler?”

“It's the sort of life he wants. The same life you've invited Daniel to share.”

“Daniel's old enough to choose for himself. Billy doesn't know what's good for him.”

“Neither, apparently, do you, Jonny.” Sophie straightened Jonathan's collar and brushed off his lapels, the way she'd done when they were growing up together and she was sending him off to school. “There's nothing I'd like better than to have that child stay here, getting proper schooling, apprenticing with Eldad. But he wouldn't be happy. He needs you.” Her expression grew stern. “But he also needs an education. Promise me you'll do that for him, and I'll be content.” She picked up the slop bucket holding the leavings from breakfast and the rotten eggs. “Now get out of my kitchen.” She thrust the bucket into Jonathan's hands. “I have dinner to make.”

Jonathan and Daniel walked across the yard to the pigpen, where Jonathan flung the contents of the slop bucket into the trough. The eggs broke, their sulfury odor mingling with the rank stench of pig manure. The hogs trotted up to the trough on their stubby legs and tussled noisily over the scraps.

“Well,” Jonathan said, “I tried.”

“You didn't try,” Daniel said. “You didn't mean to give her up at all. If you'd meant it, you'd'a told Mrs. Taylor she's a girl.”

“I promised Billy not to let her secret out. If anybody tells, it's got to be her.”

“That ain't a true promise. It's only humoring some childish fancy.”

“Someone made you a promise when you were her age, wouldn't you'a held 'em to it?”

Daniel shook his head. “When I was her age, the only promises I got was for thrashings. Can't recall as I'd'a minded were any of 'em to be broken.”

Liam clasped his knees against his chest and rested his forehead on them, but he couldn't contain the shivering. He hardly knew if he was waking or sleeping anymore, things shifted in and out so between the chills and sweats and dry heaves. Christ, he couldn't remember the last time he'd even felt like eating, not that there was anything to eat in the shanty.

Maybe it was all a dream, all that spring and summer since Nuala'd disappeared. Maybe if he'd just lie down for a wee bit, he'd wake up, and there she'd be, fixing dinner and telling him to stop playing sick and get off his sorry backside and fetch in some wood. And there would be Jimmy and Mick teasing and chasing each other about the room and knocking chairs over and Nuala thrashing them with her spoon and scolding and laughing all at the same time. And if it was dreaming he was after, then why not make the dream go back six years and more, and let him wake up a child again and Mam still alive and naught for him to worry about but keeping the woodbox full and keeping out of Da's way when he was in his cups.

I'm sorry, Mam. I'm sorry
. She'd left her babies for him to care for, and he'd failed. Failed to keep them from running wild in the streets. Failed to make them go to school. Failed to keep Jimmy and Mick from turning into thieving little fiends, bringing home oranges and sweets and toys. Failed to keep his wages out of Da's hands. Failed to keep the children out of Da's hands, when he was in a temper from the drink. Failed to keep them safe. And in the end, failed to keep them at all. Now they were all three of them gone.

He rocked himself and shivered.
I tried, Mam, I swear I did
. But with Nuala gone, it had been like the house falling down about his ears. He'd not realized how much she'd done while he was off working. There were more mysteries to housekeeping than he'd ever imagined: how to know a good cheese from a bad one, how to take butchers' trimmings and green-grocers' scraps and bakers' days-old leavings and turn them into something edible, how to make it all keep more than a day. He might as well have collected stones and warmed them by the fire; they'd have come out the same as his attempts at breadmaking. He'd even spent hard-won coin on a cookery book by “A Lady,” but it could have been a book of magic spells for all he could understand of it. His attempts at laundry and mending had left the clothes looking worse than when he'd begun. And all of it to be done after he'd put in twelve hours and more with shovel and pick and wheelbarrow, digging cellar holes and canals and ditches, and him wanting to do no more than pull a blanket over his head and shut his eyes when he got home.

He'd felt so often like the ant slaving all day while Jimmy and Mick fiddled their time away like grasshoppers. But surely the ant wouldn't have begrudged the grasshopper his fiddling if he'd known how short the grasshopper's season would be. He was sorry now for the times he'd thrashed them and taken away their stolen playthings. Sorry, too, that he'd shouted at them when their laughter and play kept him from sleep. How was he to know how little time they'd have for laughter? How was he to know they'd be crying for help and naught he could do but wet their foreheads while the fever burned them, naught he could do but hold them while they shivered with the chills, naught he could do but watch them while they died?

Now that it was all over, he couldn't even make them decent for the grave. He might as well lie next to them and pull the blanket over his own face and wait for his turn to come.

“No,” he said, his voice a croaking whisper. For sure as hell Da wasn't coming back, and if Liam didn't do for them, who would? He dragged himself upright, clutching the wall as the
room slipped sideways. He closed his eyes, waiting for the floor to stop pitching. When he opened them, it was like trying to see underwater, everything dim and wavering. Well, he was up; he might as well finish, never mind the clatter in his ears. Just down the alley for a bit of water and back. Five minutes' walking any other day. Five hundred miles today. And back home again with a full bucket . . . well, that was halfway around the world. No point thinking as far as that until he'd taken those first three steps.

One. . . . Two . . . Three
.

He gripped the doorjamb and bent to lift the bucket. Christ, you'd think it was full of rocks, so heavy it seemed. Lurching, he made his way outside, where the sunlight assaulted him like a razor blade across his eyes. He'd barely taken a dozen steps when his feet went out from under him. The last thing he heard was the faraway thud of the bucket tumbling down the road.

“Where's Billy? I should make sure this fits him.” Sophie pulled a shirt from her basket, then studied it for defects that Jonathan was sure weren't there.

“He's out in the barn, probably brushing Phizzy bald. He's been glued to that horse since I asked Daniel to join us.”

“That's one way he can make sure you don't leave him behind.”

“You're sure you don't want me to?”

“If you did, he'd be off like a shot, and heaven knows where he'd end up. As long as he's with you, at least there's someone looking out for him.”