“Now, I wouldn't go that far.” Joshua rubbed a spot on his chin. “Why don't you stop by the smithy tomorrow, see what I got for you.” And with that he spoke a few soft words to the horse and they were off again.

“I'll ask Hannah to stop by to look at Daisy's throat when she comes down later today!” Jennet called after him, and he raised a hand.

She found Curiosity and both her granddaughters in the kitchen. Lucy was up to her elbows in soap and water, scrubbing the plank table that dominated the middle of the room, while Sally tended a pot of beans and bacon hanging from a trivet over the fire. The smells of lye soap and cooking were strongest, but just underneath was the sweet-sharp smell of the herbs that went into the tisanes and teas that Curiosity cooked, day and night, for Dr. Todd. Just below those smells were the more usual ones: wax candles, hot milk, wet wool, and wood smoke, always and forever. If she went back to Scotland tomorrow and never came to this country again, Jennet knew that wood smoke would immediately bring Paradise to mind.

Curiosity herself was sitting in front of the hearth in her rocker, asleep with her knitting in her lap. In repose, her bright eyes closed to the world, she looked her age and more, and bone weary. Sally held a finger to her lips and Jennet nodded, slipping off her pattens to walk in her stocking feet across the room.

“Child, you think you can hide from me in my own kitchen?”

All three of them jumped, Jennet most of all.

“I can try,” Jennet said. “Hope lives eternal, as they say.”

Curiosity let out her low chuckle and raised her arms over her head to stretch. “I know every creak of these boards,” she said on a yawn.

“Grandmama was up all night with the doctor,” said Lucy. “We was hoping she'd get a few hours at least this afternoon.”

“Catch as catch can,” said Curiosity. She held out an arm toward Jennet, palm up, and curled her long fingers. “Come on over here, girl, and give me news from the mountain.”

Jennet settled on a three-cornered stool just in front of Curiosity, whose eyes were bloodshot but sharp as ever. For five minutes she told everything she could think to say, from what books Elizabeth had been reading to them in the evenings to this morning's visit to the trading post and the plans to delay the visit of Saint Claas until later in the month.

Curiosity smiled at that. “Those children will be hopping out of they skin with waiting.”

“Yes, they already are. But it's not so very long.”

After a moment of looking into the fire Curiosity said, “I should get back upstairs and see to Richard. Ethan been with him since sunrise.” And then, with a quick look at Jennet: “Is Hannah on her way down here too?”

Hannah had been so distracted lately, so withdrawn, that Jennet hesitated to say with any certainty at all what she might do. “She is supposed to look in on the widow, tomorrow at the latest.”

Curiosity was looking at her sharply, but after a moment her gaze flickered away. As if she realized the questions she wanted to ask had no good or satisfying answers.

Jennet said, “How is the doctor?”

Curiosity shrugged. “No better. Some worse, I suppose. He passed a tolerable night and this morning he asked for tea. I expect he'll hold on a while longer.”

“Hannah thinks he is waiting to see the Christmas firecrackers before he dies.”

Too late Jennet saw Lucy's expression of alarm and warning; the words were spoke, and she might have pinched Curiosity for the reaction she got. The old lady's face contorted, and a bright blaze of anger came into her eyes.

“Don't talk to me about no firecrackers,” she said. “I'd like to throw every one of them in the lake, and Richard Todd right after. Burning up Lord knows what just to hear the bang and watch the sizzle. As if we ain't had enough fire in Paradise.”

She set the chair to rocking hard and the old tomcat moved away in alarm.

“Grandmama,” said Lucy in a consoling tone.

“Don't you grandmama me,” Curiosity snapped in her direction. “You know I'm right. Wasn't you standing right there two years ago when Ben Cameron blew his fool thumb right off?”

“He was drunk,” offered Sally.

“Yes, he was. Stupid with it. Stupid without it too. Pouring saltpeter and Lord knows what else in a newspaper cone and setting fire to it.”

“I take it this is an old argument,” Jennet said.

“That's so,” said Curiosity. “Every year the doctor gets it into his head to try something bigger and more dangerous, and do any of the menfolk say, hold on a minute? Do anybody say, now is that a good idea, pouring all those chemicals and whatnot together? Your daddy just as bad as the doctor,” she said, jabbing a finger first at Sally and then at Lucy. “He go right along with the whole thing. And what good a blacksmith with all his fingers blowed off, may I ask you that?”

She sat back suddenly, her anger spent. A great expanse of handkerchief appeared out of her cuff, and Curiosity wiped her face with it. When she raised her head again she looked a little sheepish.

“You'll have to excuse a crankit old lady,” she said. “That blizzard got on my nerves. But I am glad to see you, child. Your face light up the room, it surely do.”

“I've come to help with the nursing,” Jennet said.

Curiosity reached out to press Jennet's hand with her own. “Good thing too. Let Ethan get some rest. The boy wore down to a shadow.”