The Caged Graves (28 page)

Then she sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Out of habit she glanced at the dressing table, but her mother's diaries were stacked the way she'd left them. There was no reason for them to be left open any longer; she'd finally understood the message they contained. Nevertheless, Verity crossed the room in her bare feet, opened the door, and leaned out.

The hallway was dark, her father's and Beulah's doors closed. Verity stepped into the hallway and then approached the stairs. She didn't stop to light a candle but passed the dark parlor and dining room without mishap, her way lit by a dim glow coming from the kitchen.

Two candles flickered on the table, providing a circle of light in the otherwise shadowy room. Beulah stood at the stove in a white nightdress, stirring a pot. Lucky wove in and out between Beulah's bare feet, mewing plaintively and rubbing his head against her ankles. As Verity watched, the old woman bent and poured a bit of warm milk into a saucer on the floor, then turned and faced Verity without surprise. “I suppose you'll be wanting some?” she asked.

“You knew all along,” said Verity.

“Fetch your own cup.” Beulah poured milk into a cup sitting on the table. “This one's mine.”

“You were in my room,” Verity went on. “While I was sleeping and whenever I was out. You kept opening the diaries—no, just that one diary—and leaving it open to the same page.” Verity had the entry memorized by now:

 

Nov 14 – Asenath pins her hopes on Miss Piper's remedies.

 

“You left that photograph out for me, too. The one of my uncle and Asenath.”

When Verity made no move to get her own cup, Beulah took one off the drying rack, poured the rest of the milk into it, and held it out.

Verity accepted the offering but glared at the old woman. “You
knew.
And you said nothing!”

“I suspected, but I had no proof.” Beulah's unbraided hair hung down to her bony rump; she swung it out of the way before sitting at the kitchen table. “I didn't know that diary still existed until you mentioned it.”

The warm milk was a welcome comfort in spite of her anger. Verity sat down and sipped at it, staring at Beulah, who suddenly seemed very interested in the contents of her own cup.

“Why didn't you say anything?” Verity demanded. “Why didn't you just tell me?”

“I'm a Poole. She was Clara Thomas. If poison was suspected at the time, who do you think they would have blamed? Folk considered her a good woman—though there were always some who died who ought to have lived. People who'd crossed Miss Clara in one way or another, if anybody cared to notice.” Beulah sniffed with disgust. “I thought you'd be smart enough to reason it out for yourself. The woman who married your uncle so soon after his wife died, coming to the house with a remedy the day those two took ill?”

“I might have,” Verity snapped, “if I'd known her name was Clara Piper before she was married!”

“How could you not know that?” Beulah asked in astonishment.

Verity threw both hands over her face. How utterly maddening to find out that Beulah had known all along! Yet if Beulah had aired her suspicions earlier, would Verity have believed her—or dismissed her as an ignorant old Indian woman? Verity, to her chagrin, knew she'd made some highhanded assumptions about almost everyone she'd met in Catawissa. And most of the time she'd been wrong.

“I waited up for you, the night that woman took you to Cissy Clayton's lying-in,” Beulah said, “to make sure she brought you home. That girl of hers had always mooned after Mr. Nathaniel. I didn't put it past her to do you some harm.”

Verity almost hadn't come home. Her heart thudded as she remembered the horse knocking her down. The cracking sound right before must have been her aunt's whip, she realized. Eli Clayton had never meant her any harm; he'd
saved
her life, grabbing the horse's bridle and stopping the carriage from running her over.

Verity uncovered her face and looked at Beulah. “The medicine she gave me that night—it disappeared.”

Beulah Poole nodded.

“And you stayed in the room with me, the time she gave me the laudanum.” Verity remembered someone with long white hair leaning over her and thinking it was Asenath.

Beulah sniffed again. “That wasn't laudanum. You were seeing things and raving. I don't know what she gave you, but I had to pin you to the bed with sheets to keep you from hurting yourself.”

Verity clasped her hands around the warm cup. “Did Liza tell me the truth—the real reason for the cages?”

“I don't know what Miss Liza told you.”

“Eli Clayton.” Verity swallowed hard. “What he did to his daughter—”

Beulah nodded. “That's the truth. After your mother and Miss Asenath died, there was great fear here that he might violate their graves. Mr. Boone and Mr. Thomas were talking about standing guard with shotguns every night, for as long as it took. But then old Mrs. Thomas, your grandmother, said they should have metal cages made. Those cages caused some scandal in the town. That's the reason Mrs. Gaines was able to persuade your father to give you up. She didn't want you to grow up under that shame.”

Verity set down her cup. If she'd come to Beulah at the beginning, looking for the truth, could she have avoided all that had happened? Or were confessions like this only possible late at night, after the worst day of one's life?

“I was against sending you away,” Beulah continued. “Not that anybody asked my opinion. The poor man had lost his wife; they shouldn't have taken his daughter away from him too.” She sipped from her cup again and added, almost as an afterthought, “Having you back is the best thing that ever happened to him.”

Verity blinked rapidly. “I thought you didn't like me.”

“Why wouldn't I like you? I helped your mother birth you, didn't I?”

Tears blurred her vision. “You said I needed spanking half a dozen times a day,” she whispered.

“You still do,” Beulah snapped. She plunked her empty cup down on the table. “So what are you planning to do about
him?
”

Verity didn't need to ask who she meant.

THEY FOUND Nate in the orchard the next morning, as Verity guessed they would. She wasn't surprised he would turn to something that gave him comfort. It grieved her to imagine how he must have felt last night when she devoted herself to the care of another man, and she didn't know if he would forgive her. Ransloe Boone didn't drive the wagon away after she climbed down but instead sat there silently.

Verity knew what Nate thought when he realized that her father was going to wait for her; she could see it in his face.

Nate dropped his eyes as she approached, and she sensed that he was gathering his composure. When she was close enough, he looked up and spoke first. “How is he?”

How like him to ask about Hadley Jones before anything else and to sincerely care about the answer. “Better this morning,” Verity replied. “Dr. Robbins sent word.”

Heartbeat stronger,
Robbins had written.
Not much color, but he's awake and asking for you.
Then, at the bottom of the note, he'd added:
Miss Boone, if you were a boy, I'd sign you on as apprentice.

“He'll make it,” Nate said. “I'm sure of it.”

“I don't know what will become of him if he does.” Verity knew that the sheriff was anxious to have a long conversation with Hadley Jones.

“He was trying to protect his brother as long as possible,” Nate said. “And when he wasn't able to any longer, he made his stand. People understand that. You might find he's even respected a little more for it. We take care of our own. People will try to keep those little Thomas boys from learning what their mother did. My mother's already gone down to the house to see about those children, and I expect . . .”

Verity flinched at the mention of Clara Thomas, and Nate broke off what he was saying. “I'm sorry!” he blurted out instead. “You were right all along, and I kept telling you to leave it alone. I was wrong and stubborn and jealous. If I had listened to you in the first place—”

Verity shook her head sadly. “You couldn't have prevented it. Even I never dreamed the truth could be something like this—that she would do such a thing.”

Or that she would plan to do it again.

I decided it might be better to let you marry Nathaniel so he could get the Boone land, and I could deal with
you
afterward.
Without the opportunity to deal with Verity on the spot, Clara Thomas might never have been found out. Beulah's watchful eyes would have failed someday, and Verity would have succumbed to a cup of tea or a honey cake.

All for the young man who stood before her.

Gazing up into his stormy eyes, Verity marveled that, once again, his presence left her nearly speechless. She didn't even know where to begin telling him everything she wanted him to know.

He took a step back, his gaze dropping to her hand. “I know what you've come here to say. There's no need. I won't stand in your way.”

Verity looked down. The ring. Perhaps that was a good place to start. She began to twist it loose from her finger.

Nate took another step back. “Give that to my mother. I don't want it. I could never give it to anyone else.” His voice was hoarse.

“I was hoping,” she said, holding it up, “that you would offer it to me again. Properly this time,” she added, “without letting your mother speak for you.”

“I didn't—” Then he clamped his lips shut. He
had,
and they both knew it.

She felt a little teary, but she blinked to clear her eyes. “On your knees, too, I think.”

Nate took the ring and closed it tightly in his palm. “I don't understand,” he admitted. “Verity, I saw your face when he was hurt. I know you love him.”

“He was shot before my eyes!” she cried. “I was horrified! I didn't want him to
die,
Nate, but I don't love him. Do you think I could have stood there and assisted at his surgery if I was in love with him?” A wave of emotion came over her, and she shuddered. “If it had been
you
on that table, I would have fainted. And I never faint.”

Nate looked confused. “I don't understand,” he repeated.

“Nate, you asked me days ago if I loved you, and I didn't answer. You were right: I read that poem, but I didn't know what it meant until now.” She glanced at the trees around them, groping for the right words. “I thought love was—big and loud and sudden, like a thunderbolt.” She looked back, meeting his eyes. “I didn't know it was deep and quiet and grew upon a woman slowly, until one day she realizes it's the very breath and smiles and tears of her life. Do you want to know the first thought in my head when Hadley Jones was shot?
Thank God that wasn't Nate.
It felt horribly selfish to think such a thing at the time, but there it was.
Thank God it wasn't
you.”

She reached for him, dissolving into tears, and he gathered her into his arms. She pressed her face against his chest. This was love, then: the safe feeling of his arms around her. His hand holding hers tightly in the cemetery when her mother's grave had been disturbed, and him dragging her into the doctor's office when his rival needed saving. There were the letters they'd exchanged, the poem, and the kitten. And it was more than just the two of them. There was the relationship between Nate and her father, and the growing one between Verity and his sisters. She and Nate had even played together as children.

All she'd ever had with Hadley Jones was a flirtation—an exciting and flattering one that she'd been too vain to give up.

She didn't want to imagine a life without Nathaniel McClure in it.

Nate put a hand under her chin and lifted her face. She could see he was still befuddled, but her favorite smile in all the world was dawning as he realized this was going his way after all. “I don't know if I'll ever be able to reason out what's in your head,” he said.

“You can have as long as you like to try,” she said. “If you want to, that is.” She hadn't forgotten that the ring was still enclosed in his fist.

He remembered then too, and promptly dropped to both knees, right in the middle of the orchard. “Verity Boone,” he said, “will you let me spend the rest of my life trying to reason you out? Will you raise our children—even though they're bound to be stubborn, ornery little cusses? Will you let me struggle through your favorite poetry—even though I'll probably never like it?”

“I can't stand Gulliver and those ridiculous Lilliputians,” Verity said vehemently, “but I do love you, Nate.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes, I will.” Laughing, Verity held out her hand. He grinned, knowing this time what he was supposed to do, and slid the ring back onto her finger. “Thank heavens you finally asked.”

He tugged her down on her knees beside him, and then he kissed her. Wrapping both arms around his neck, she reveled in the feel of his familiar body against hers and the absolute joy of knowing she never wanted any other lips but his on hers again.

Then her bottom hit the ground, and she protested halfheartedly, “Nate! My father . . .”

“He left,” Nate said between kisses. “Some time ago.”

Verity giggled as he lay down beside her on the grass of their orchard. When it came to love, she reflected, the poem might have left out one or two things.

 

The sky had been overcast in the early morning, but sunlight was breaking through the clouds in broad beams just as Ransloe Boone's wagon came to a stop in front of the Mount Zion Church. Congregants arriving by carriage, wagon, and on foot were assembling inside for the Sunday service, but Verity looked immediately toward the cemetery grounds, wanting to see what work had been done.