The Endless Forest (41 page)

M
artha had no sense at all of the time; whether it was twenty minutes or two hours later that they closed Daniel’s cabin door behind themselves and set out for the village. She was so tired that she was lightheaded, and how could she be anything else after the events of the last twenty-four hours? She had come up the mountain an unmarried girl essentially alone in the world but for her stepsister, Callie, and now here she was, on the brink of getting married. Again. So soon. Maybe too soon.

It was what people would say, and there was no use pretending otherwise.

But she would be one of the Bonners. It was a thought so odd that she might have laughed aloud. She had never imagined herself as a Bonner, though they invited her into their home and treated her with such kindness.

“When I was little,” she told Daniel, “I used to hope that your ma would want me as a servant one day. So I could be near all of you.”

He only smiled down at her when she told him that, which was
enough. To have the right to say the things she was thinking—no, it was more than that. He liked it when she talked to him, as odd as that seemed. She wondered if she would ever really understand what he felt, and what he wanted from her.

Martha cast a small look out of the corner of her eye, suddenly shy but needing to study him nonetheless. Unshaven, his clothes the worse for two days’ or more wear, weapons hung all about him and his left arm in a sling, he might have stepped out of one of Jennet’s pirate stories. There was white in his shorn hair and deep lines bracketed his mouth and eyes, but he still had that way about him, the look of all the Bonner men. When he smiled some of those years fell away. It made him almost beautiful; Martha could find no other suitable word. He was tall and lean, hickory hard. When he turned his head his neck reminded her of an elk’s, which was such an odd idea that she was too embarrassed to pursue it.

His mother would ask hard questions that would require answers.

Why? Why him, why now? What was it she hoped from marriage to Daniel?

The first word that came to mind was not one she was proud of.

Safety
. As Daniel Bonner’s wife she would be safe. She would belong. Jemima couldn’t hurt her anymore if she was married to Daniel Bonner.

But there was a great deal more to it than that. If asked, she would make herself say the rest of it, why she was drawn to him. Why she wanted him.

The way he looked at a problem from all sides and then came up with an answer that should have been obvious from the start. How impatient he got with a certain kind of talk, and the way he struggled to hide it so as not to offend. Out of courtesy and respect, or maybe simply because he knew how to pick his battles. His loyalty to his family, and the easy dry humor, the way he talked to his nephews and nieces.

How he dealt with Birdie, as prickly as she was, and as demanding.

“Your little sister,” Martha said aloud.

He grinned. “She’ll be insufferable.”

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t have some of the credit,” Martha said, and Daniel laughed aloud. Then he turned sharply toward the village, his head inclined.

“What?” Martha asked, pulling up short.

“Ben,” said Daniel. “And he’s moving fast.”

It seemed that Ben Savard could move very fast indeed when the need was on him; Martha barely had time to wonder what was wrong before he was in shouting distance. He ran loose-limbed and hardly seemed to be breathing hard.

He raised a hand in greeting and Daniel and Martha both returned the gesture, and then he was there. His shirt and face were damp with sweat.

“You barely had time to get to the village,” Daniel said. “You must have turned right around to come back.”

“What is it?” Martha tried to sound as calm as Daniel, but she heard the tremor in her voice. Ben looked at her and smiled, his odd blue-green eyes flashing against the dark of his skin.

“No need to panic,” he said. “But it would be a good idea if you turned right around and went back to your place, Daniel.”

And just like that they did turn around and start back. In those ten minutes of walking neither Daniel nor Ben said anything, and Martha thought she would scream with needing to know.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Ben took a deep breath and wiped his brow with his sleeve.

“I don’t like to bear bad tidings, but Martha, your mama came into Paradise not an hour ago.” It didn’t take long for him to tell the rest of it.

“She remarried?” Martha wondered why this possibility had never occurred to her. “And there’s a boy?”

“That’s the claim. We all thought you should stay here until they’ve got a sense of what she wants, and how to handle the situation. A couple of hours, maybe.”

Martha’s throat was so dry that she had to clear it twice before she could make her voice obey her. She said, “I can’t go down there at all. I don’t want to see her. Them.”

“I know that, darlin’,” Ben said. “It’s got to come as a shock. But just hold tight, can you do that? Any message you want me to carry down, Daniel?”

Martha saw none of her own surprise or unease on Daniel’s face. Instead he looked grim, even angry.

“No,” he said. “Just bring us word as soon as you know anything.”

And just that simply Ben was out the door and sprinted away, this
time leaving the path to cut through the forest and down the mountainside.

“And now what?” Martha said.

“That’s easy,” Daniel said. “First we’re going to eat something, and then we’re going to sleep. Or you could sleep first. You look like you’re ready to collapse.”

There was a small silence that seemed to grow between them while Daniel took cornbread, ripe cheese, and some dried meat from the food safe. He put these things on the small table with its two chairs and then went into the workroom that ran along the back of the cabin.

Martha took a pinch of cornbread between her fingers and then let the crumbs sit on her tongue. She walked the short distance to the small chamber that opened off the far end of the room, and stood for a minute in the doorway.

A bed, unmade. Clothes hanging from hooks. A cold hearth. A Betty lamp on the mantelpiece, and a candle stub. A few books, well read.

From the window she could see Daniel at the pump. He looked around himself now and then in his usual watchful way. A knife sheath lay against his thigh, easy to hand. She wondered if that knife could stop a bear or a panther, and if he’d ever brought a man low that way.

You fought with the weapons you had to hand. Something her mother had told her so many times, without talking about her own weapons or how she had used them.

And now she was back. It was as if Jemima could somehow predict the worst possible moment to interfere in her daughter’s life. Another truth presented itself: Whatever plans Jemima had, they were already under way and nothing short of death could stop her.

The boy might be Martha’s brother. Her half brother, and Callie’s. She didn’t know how to think about that, or even how to stop thinking about it. If it was true, the boy was the only blood relation she had in the world beyond Jemima.

A shiver ran up her back and following close on its heels, the first tickle of nausea at the back of her throat.

She moved to the bed and took a moment to straighten the covers and tuck them. Then she stretched out on her side, her head bedded on
the crook of her arm. Weariness rolled over her in waves so that she passed from waking to sleeping in an instant, unaware that she had crossed the threshold.

When Martha started awake, the window had been opened and a soft breeze touched her face. She was alone, and for the first moment confused. She sat up just as the chamber door opened.

“I thought I heard you,” Daniel said. “There’s tea, if you want some.”

And he walked off without waiting to hear if she had an answer. Martha followed him. The cold hearth had been stoked and fed, and a pot sat on the grate next to a battered kettle.

“You needed sleep more than food,” Daniel said.

Her stomach growled in agreement. She took the teacup he offered her and sat at the table taking small sips and trying to make sense of things.

“How long did I sleep?”

He cocked his head. “Maybe two hours. I was asleep myself for most of the time. On the settle.” A small curve at the corner of his mouth, as if she had accused him of something silly.

“And no word?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But I doubt it will be much longer.”

She said, “You can take it back. It’s not too late.”

Because, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say, they hadn’t gone very far beyond kissing, and wasn’t that fortunate? He owed her nothing.

Daniel took the cup from her hand and set it aside. “What are you talking about, I can take it back. What can I take back? You think I’m so scared of Jemima that I’d tuck tail and run?”

“No,” Martha said, and she felt herself smiling. “I don’t think that, but I wanted to give you the chance to prove me wrong.”

He studied her face for a long moment and then he cleared his throat. “We could just take off,” he said. “Elope, right now.”

“That would be very ungrateful after all your mother’s kindnesses,” she said, and that earned her a real smile from him.

She studied the wood grain in the tabletop, and when she had gathered her courage she said, “Maybe we should just go down to the village.”

“I can think of a few reasons why not,” he said slowly. “But the most
important one is, my folks are down there right now with their heads together, and they’ll come up with a plan. They always do. We can give them a little more time, can’t we?”

Martha nodded, but he saw her hesitation.

“What?”

“I feel like a fish in a barrel,” she said.

He seemed to understand that. “We could go back up to Lake in the Clouds,” he said. “Or under the falls, even. That’s a tradition in the family, hiding out under the falls.”

There were many rumors in the village about a secret hideaway on Hidden Wolf, and Martha had heard them all. And still, she found it hard to credit the notion.

“Behind the falls?”

He nodded. “Two caves. We store food there, and pelts. Only the family knows how to find the opening. And that includes you now too.”

She felt herself coloring with surprise and pleasure. Martha hardly knew what to do with the extremes that day had brought, and might continue to bring. Fear and embarrassment and utter happiness and anger that gripped her like a fist. She could not think of her mother without bile rising into her throat, but then there was Daniel. His calm certainty and absolute conviction about her, who she was and what she could be. And what if he was simply wrong?

“It’s a lot to deal with in one day,” he said to her. “And I understand if you need to keep to yourself until you sort it through. One thing though is, I’m not going to get mad at you for speaking your mind. I can see you’ve got things to say, so go on and say them.”

That made her laugh aloud. “You never get mad, Daniel Bonner? What kind of saint are you?”

He looked surprised. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t get mad. I don’t doubt we’ll have our share of disagreements, and I can lose my temper now and then. What I meant was, I wouldn’t ever strike out at you in anger. I may walk away to get myself under control, but I’ll always come back.”

Just that simply he stole her breath away, but he wasn’t finished.

“I expect the same from you,” he said. “It’s the way my folks have always handled things and I think it will most likely work for us too. We can get through anything that way.”

“Your ma and da can get through anything that way,” Martha heard herself say. “What makes you think I’m equal to your ma?”

His smile faded and he slipped his hand behind her neck to pull her face up close to his. “Are you trying to scare me off? Because let me make something clear, Martha Kirby. I see who you are, even if you cain’t see yourself.”

She lowered her face so her forehead touched his. “I never thought I’d say this, but my mother did me a good turn.”

Daniel turned his head and his breath moved the hair at her temple. “And how’s that?”

“If it weren’t for her, I’d be married to Teddy right now and on a ship headed for England. And I think that would have been a mistake.”

His mouth trailed from her temple, across her cheekbone and down to her mouth. The kiss was short, a brief soft touch that set every nerve on edge and made her collapse forward, into the sheltering curve of his arm.

Martha felt him tense. He turned away from her, his brows folding together in concentration. He said, “Horses.”

They moved toward the door together. Martha’s stomach lurched and for that moment she would have lost the little she had eaten but then she saw that it was Ethan who had come. He was riding his own roan and leading two others, Ben’s Florida and Hannah’s Jiminy.

He pulled up hard and was on the ground before his Scout came to a full stop.

“How bad is it?” Martha called out to him, and Daniel’s hand came up to the small of her back.

“Let’s not give Jemima so much credit,” he said. “Ethan, what news have you got for us?”

Ethan said, “Best we go inside to talk, don’t you think?”

He accepted a cup of cold tea and emptied it in two swallows, and then he drew in a deep breath.

“First off, she calls herself Jemima Focht now. Brought her husband with her, a lawyer. John Mayfair has stepped in to represent your side of things, Martha. Our side.”

“And the boy? Ben said there’s a boy.”

“There is. She says she named him Nicholas Wilde, after his father.”

Martha wondered what Callie would make of that.

“What do they want?” Daniel’s tone was steady. “Do you know?”

Ethan said, “I’ll tell you what it looks like so far. Martha, Jemima is going to try to challenge the portion of your father’s will that assigns guardianship to Will Spencer and my uncle Nathaniel. They’ll claim that Liam Kirby had no right to make such provisions for you, as you are legally the daughter of Isaiah Kuick, which makes—”

“Jemima my legal guardian,” Martha finished for him. “And if the boy is who she says he is, he has a right to half Callie’s property. So that’s it; they’re after the money and property.”