Curiosity linked her arm through Elizabeth's and pulled her along. “Listen now, ain't that thrush got a pretty song?” And then: “Sometimes you get all wound up in that rational thinking you like so much, and you forget what it was like to be young. You got to let those two make they own mistakes.”

Overhead the trees were stirring in a rising wind, branches clicking together like bones. Elizabeth saw a flash of red, and then another: the birds were coming back and bringing the spring with them.

“I don't know what else to do,” she said. “Should I send Simon away? That would be another kind of injustice, and I think it would do more harm in the long run. She cares for him, and he for her.”

Curiosity shrugged her agreement. After a moment Elizabeth went on.

“All I want—all I'm asking for—is that they don't rush into anything. And I have to point out that Simon seems to actually like the arrangement, let's not forget that.”

“I ain't telling you what to do,” Curiosity said. “But I got to remind you, since you seem to have put it out of your mind, stolen honey tastes twice as sweet.”

Elizabeth huffed a small laugh. “You're saying that I've set them a challenge—”

“Not both of them. Just Lily.”

“Just Lily, then. I've set Lily a challenge that she must rise to. Which means . . .” Her voice trailed off. “What, exactly?”

“What it mean is, Simon got himself between a rock and a hard place. Lily going to be working hard to make him forget what he promised you. Now he a good man, and I like him. But he ain't nothing more than that and I don't know how long any man could stand up to Lily when she's in a mood to ask, pretty like, for what she want.”

Elizabeth sniffed. “You make her sound like . . . like some kind of seductress. As if she had no self-control, or common sense.”

Curiosity stopped and turned to face Elizabeth. She peered at her, squinting so that her brows drew together. “I'm thinking just now of another time you and me went walking in these woods, all the way up to Lake in the Clouds. About twenty year ago it was, I know you recall.”

For all of her life, Elizabeth had cursed her inability to hide her thoughts. At moments like this she had no chance at all of dissembling, not with anyone who knew her as well as Curiosity.

A carpet of anemone under the sugar maples, white birch not yet in leaf, beech and maple and wild cherry. Yellow-flowered trout lily with its spotted purple leaves. The mountains and their spotty canopy of evergreens, and thousands upon thousands of trees touched with the first tender green. And Nathaniel, angry at her and wanting her too. In her anxiety and confusion she had challenged his lack of reasoning.

“Maybe I ain't rational,” Nathaniel had said. “But maybe rational ain't what's called for right now.”

And he had been right. They had done the irrational, they had acted out of love and wanting and the need to be together when everything in Elizabeth argued against it. And it had been the right thing, in the end.“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do recall.”

“Good,” said Curiosity. “Now maybe you should have a talk with the girl, and own up to some things. It might get you where you want to go. You do know where you want to go?”

“Why, yes,” Elizabeth said. “I want her to make a good choice. I want her to be happy. I would like it—” She hesitated.

Curiosity smiled at her. “Go on.”

“I would like it if she didn't go so far away as Montreal, but if it is what she must do . . .” Her voice wobbled and then faded into nothing.

“They'll make pretty babies, the two of them,” Curiosity said. “Pretty babies with a stubborn streak wide as the sky.” She laughed at that idea, and Elizabeth found herself laughing too.

They came to the edge of the orchard and paused. The sky had begun to darken, filled now with scudding clouds like churning fists. Elizabeth pulled her shawl closer and straightened her shoulders.

“This might be messy,” said Curiosity.

“No doubt,” said Elizabeth. “But I have an idea.”

Curiosity sent her a startled look.

“Don't worry,” Elizabeth said. “Just follow my lead.”

In Elizabeth's experience, good manners and forbearance were far more effective tools in dealing with difficult people than slaps and hard words. In her life she had had ample opportunity to test this theory, and rarely had she been disappointed. Drunken trappers, rude clerks, and condescending patroons were most manageable when they were slightly off balance, and the easiest way to bring that about was with a smile and a truly kind word.

She reminded herself of this when the door opened to their knock. Jemima's expression was thunderous, but Elizabeth put a hand on Curiosity's arm to calm and quiet her and met thunder with light.

“Hello, Jemima,” she said. “You are looking very well. Do you have a moment for us?”

Some uncertainty flickered across the girl's face, and then was replaced by a reluctant shrug.

“I'm as well as can be expected. What do you want?”

“Just a word with you and Nicholas.”

With her mouth pulled into a tight circle and her eyes narrowed, Jemima looked so much like her father that Elizabeth was always taken aback. She felt her own smile falter, but managed to rescue it.

“Come in then,” Jemima said, stepping away from the door. She had yet to say a word to Curiosity, but neither did she object when the older woman followed Elizabeth into the dim cabin. “He's in the barn. I'll fetch him.”