The Endless Forest (42 page)

She folded her hands tight to keep them from trembling.

“Can I just—give her everything? Let her have it, as long as she leaves me in peace.”

“If the courts rule in her favor, she’ll get everything anyway, and still have control over you. And there is a good chance that they will in fact rule in her favor. There was always the chance she’d come back to make such a claim.”

“You never said as much to me. Nobody did.”

“We saw no need to worry you about something that might never come to pass. Martha, there are strong factors in your favor. She abandoned you. Kuick admitted in writing that he wasn’t your father, and Liam Kirby claimed paternity. And there was that questionable episode with the deed to the orchard.”

A knot fixed itself in the back of Martha’s throat, and her gorge rose to meet it. She pressed her lips together and made an effort to gain control over her stomach and her mind both. Now was not the time to wilt. It had come, as she knew it must, but she would not have to meet it alone.

Ethan was saying, “John wrote this for Nathaniel’s signature, and there’s a letter too.” He pulled two sheets of paper, already much rumpled, from the same old battered leather bag he had been carrying for years.

The first, smaller sheet of paper was folded in half, with Daniel’s name written in a hasty hand across it.

“My father,” Daniel said.

He opened it and held it to the side so that Martha could read it too. The pen strokes were dark and hard enough to have torn the paper in places.

Martha folded the sheet carefully and tucked it into her bodice. It was a note she wanted to read again, in privacy and solitude.

The other paper was more formally written, this time in a stranger’s hand.

Martha had stopped breathing. Everything had stopped, it seemed, because the only sound she could hear was the rushing of her own blood in her ears. Daniel and Ethan were looking at her.

“I already asked you three times in the last couple hours,” Daniel said. “You never did give me a straight answer. I said I didn’t want to push you, and I meant it. I can get you settled safe somewhere in Johnstown, Martha.”

Her mother was in the village right now, putting one of her plans into motion. The thing was, Jemima’s schemes usually did work out in her favor.

Martha said, “Do we have to go right now, in the clothes we’re wearing?”

“Jennet packed a saddlebag for you,” Ethan said. “There’s money and a bill of credit and even some food. Birdie was very concerned that you two didn’t starve on your way to getting married. She begged to come along, but your ma wouldn’t have it.”

And then the first tears did come. Martha dashed them away. She said, “Will you tell Birdie thank you? Tell them all?”

“Of course,” Ethan said.

“And tell her that the best part of marrying her brother is getting her as a sister.”

There, she had said it.

“Hey,” Daniel said, but he was smiling. “That’s a mighty odd way of accepting a proposal.”

“It was an odd proposal,” Martha said.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I had best get back.”

“Wait,” Martha said. “About Callie—”

He said, “Don’t worry about Callie, I promise I’ll take care of her.”

Martha had her doubts, but there was another matter that concerned her more. “If she needs a place to stay, she should take Ivy House. Will you tell her that?”

“That’s where she is now,” Ethan said. “I’m headed that way.”

“It’s unfair that I should have everything and she be left alone,” Martha said. “Whatever she needs, she should have. No matter how put out with me she may be, I want to be sure she is safe and comfortable.”

Ethan leaned over and kissed Martha on the cheek. Something he had never done before, but it felt right.

“Hey,” Daniel said again, but he stepped forward and hugged his cousin with his good arm. “Ethan,” he said. “Will you talk to Lily, try to put her at ease with this?”

“I don’t think you need worry about Lily anymore,” Ethan said. “It
was her idea that you two go straight off and don’t come back until you’re good and married.”

Of all the strange and disturbing news Ethan had brought them, this was certainly the one that would occupy Martha for the longest time. She saw the confusion move across Daniel’s face too, and then it was gone, and in its place, grim determination.

“I wish there was time to write a note,” Martha told Ethan.

“And I wish I could paint like Lily,” Ethan said. “I’d paint the two of you standing on the porch against the sky with the mountains all around, and you’d see how you look when you’re happy. As it is I’ll just have to remind you when you forget. Now will you two get a move on?”

They waited for a moment until Ethan reached the curve in the path and then they raised their hands in farewell.

“Well, then,” Daniel said. She felt him looking at her. “If you’re sure.”

Nothing seemed sure to Martha right at this moment. The world had tilted out of its orbit.

Jiminy pawed the ground impatiently, and Florida followed suit.

“Everything is going so fast,” Martha said.

“Too fast, maybe.” He was standing away from her, too far to touch. And right now she wanted that, she needed that assurance. Maybe he saw it in her face because he reached out a hand, palm up. Martha took it and he bent his arm so that she came up against him. They stood there in the shade of the porch for a minute and then another, and little by little the tension drained away. Martha rested her head against his shoulder and shut out everything but the feel of his shirt against her cheek, the solid shape of him, and the smell of the sunshine hot on skin and leather and muslin, and the slow steady blossoming of something that could be, that just might be happiness.

It was the last thing she could have imagined about this moment. Martha’s mother was come to claim her, as she had always feared might happen. Her mother was here, but so was Daniel. First and foremost, Daniel was with her.

T
hey were on their way home when Elizabeth realized where Callie must have gone. To Nathaniel she said, “I want to go sit with her. She’ll be very agitated and she shouldn’t be alone.”

And so they changed direction and found their way to Ivy House. There was a pot of violets on the front rail, velvety deep purple with touches of yellow that seemed to glow. There was beauty to be found even in the most difficult and sober of times, but Elizabeth doubted Callie would see it that way.

Joseph Crispin went by leading a donkey cart laden with empty chicken crates. They paused to speak a few words with him, and in that time Elizabeth had the sense of somebody watching them from the window. She put her hand on Nathaniel’s arm.

“I think it best if I go in alone,” she said.

He thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “But I don’t want you walking home alone past dark, do you hear me?”

Elizabeth’s first impulse was to shake off his caution, but then she
thought again of Jemima and she nodded. “I don’t imagine I’ll be here that long, but come at dusk if I’m not home yet.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “We can take the girl home with us if you don’t like the idea of her alone here. I’ll sleep in the hayloft if that’s what it takes.”

Elizabeth caught his earlobe and brought him back down so that she could kiss him back, properly. They had come this far together and survived much worse than a spiteful and greedy Jemima Southern. And they had slept in the hayloft more than once. She would do it again, and gladly.

“Not without me,” she said, and then she went in to Callie.

The girl was sitting at the kitchen table with her hands folded before her. The little house was still and obviously empty.

“Mrs. Thicke’s gone to help Curiosity,” Callie said. “I told her to stay there until somebody sends for her.”

Elizabeth’s worry for the girl shifted and turned into unease.

She said, “I’ll make tea and see what there is to eat.”

If she moved slowly and with caution, Elizabeth thought that Callie might relax enough to start the conversation herself. She warmed the teapot, sought out the milk jug, set the table properly. It wasn’t until she put the tea and the plate of buttered bread down and sat herself that it happened.

“Martha?”

“She’s safe,” Elizabeth said.

“On Hidden Wolf.”

“Yes. For the moment.”

Callie looked so stricken that Elizabeth reached out to touch her, but the girl jerked away. A scratching at the door, and her face was suddenly alive with hope.

When Ethan came in, it all seeped away, like a candle flame stuttering out. Slowly, though, something new came into the girl’s face. Contented relief, perhaps. Resignation. Ethan was a friend she trusted who had come to help, and she was glad of it.

Without explanation or introduction Ethan said, “Here’s what’s happened so far.”

Elizabeth listened without interrupting as Ethan told Callie in great detail about what Jemima and her new husband had said and claimed,
and how they had been received. He described the boy who was meant to be her half brother, and he described him carefully, noting the things that Elizabeth had seen: a sweet child, unafraid.

“Does he look like my father?”

“I think that’s for you to decide,” Ethan said.

He told her about the meeting in the schoolhouse, and the plan they had put together on such short notice.

And then, looking at Elizabeth as much as Callie, he told them about his ride up Hidden Wolf, and how he found Daniel and Martha, and the conversation they had had about the documents and the choices before them.

In all of that Callie never said a word. Instead her breath came more slowly and the little bit of color in her face seeped away until Elizabeth feared that she might faint.

Her voice rasped. “You are telling me that Martha is gone off with Daniel. Eloped with Daniel.”

“That was the suggestion put to them,” Ethan said. “I believe that is what they are going to do, but we can’t know for sure.”

Elizabeth said, “It is Martha’s choice, Callie. No one would try to force her.”

“They’ll be married,” Callie said dully. “Because of Jemima.”

Elizabeth caught Ethan’s gaze. He gave a small shake of the head.

“What we’re worried about right now is you,” Ethan said.

“I want to go to Johnstown,” Callie said.

Elizabeth started, but Ethan seemed not at all surprised.

“I want to go to Johnstown now,” Callie said. “Will you take me, Ethan? Or lend me a horse and I’ll ride by myself.”

And just that simply, Ethan agreed. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll take you.”

It seemed that Ethan saw nothing odd in this plan, but Elizabeth was not so fortunate.

“Callie, what do you hope to accomplish?” Elizabeth asked, in as gentle a tone as she could manage.

Callie looked puzzled, and so Elizabeth tried again. “Why is it you want to go after them?”

“To be with her,” Callie said simply. “To be there. She’s all I have left.”

Her tone was unremarkable. Elizabeth glanced at Ethan again and he shook his head at her, one sharp movement that asked her to leave this line of inquiry alone.

“We have to go straight away,” Callie said. She stood and looked at Ethan. “There’s no time to lose.”

Elizabeth said, “Callie, first we should talk about Jemima. I fear you are just as much at peril as Martha. Jemima will take what she can.”

Suddenly the animation came back into Callie’s face, as quick as a strike of lightning.

“Oh, no,” she said with a disconcerting calm. “No she won’t. I’ll kill her first. I’d go to the gallows happily for that pleasure.”

“But right now we’re going to Johnstown,” Ethan said. “We can talk about Jemima later.”