"No," said Elizabeth, taken by surprise and trying not to show it. Hawkeye's squaw. "They called it apple grunt."

"Ah, then," said Billy. As if he understood completely.

Chapter 11

Elizabeth was surprised to see her father waiting for her at the door when she came up with Richard Todd. The judge had been pacing the hall and watching out the window, and was out the front door to meet them before Elizabeth could get the borrowed snowshoes off and thank Richard for his help. With a calculating look at the judge's expression, Richard took his leave of them.

"I'm very sorry," Elizabeth said, when her father had made his displeasure known. "I had no idea you'd be so worried about my welfare. But there was no opportunity to send you word."

The judge stopped his pacing and turned his great head to look at her, incredulous. "It's not your welfare that worried me," he said. "I would hope that you yourself would see that it is your reputation at stake."

"I see," she said shortly, moving past him to dry the wet hem of her skirt before the fire. "You would rather I had gotten lost in the blizzard and perished than have the village gossip."

"If you hadn't gone up the mountain in the first place," her father said in clipped tones, "this dilemma would not have confronted you, and you would have been home, where you belong."

Elizabeth swirled to meet her father. All the force of her morning's outing, all the emotion she had brought to Nathaniel, were close to the surface, and now they took another turn.

"I do not belong at home!" she said, struggling to maintain an even tone, and failing.

"The Bonners are good men," the judge said. "Chingachgook is as fine an Indian as ever lived." He stopped, more unsure of himself now. "But they are not suitable company for a young unmarried woman of good family."

"Why? Why exactly, Father?" Elizabeth watched her father squirm and redden. "What you are thinking but will not say is that they are the wrong color. That I should be spending my time with that insipid Katherine Witherspoon and Richard Todd, people of my own kind."

The judge's color rose another notch. "And I would have told you so, if you had bothered to ask me before running off to Lake in the Clouds!"

It was rare that Elizabeth truly lost her temper, but she felt all the blood in her body congregate in her hands, her fingers jerking with the need to pick up something and throw it. "Shall I infer from this that I may not accept an invitation without your approval?"

"You will ask my approval," her father said tightly, "or I'll lock you in your room!"

Elizabeth drew up to her full height. An awful calm came over her, and the room was silent but for the sound of the fire and her father's hoarse breathing.

"I will pack my bags this very day and set out for England, if you do not reconsider that position," she said in a voice so deadly calm that the judge swayed as if he had received a physical blow.

Elizabeth swept past him and shut the door quietly behind her.

* * *

In a blind rush, she began to pile her things together on her bed, pulling clothing out of the drawers, folding her dresses haphazardly, her hands shaking so that small objects fell to the floor and would not be picked up.

Curiosity appeared in short order, her smooth brown face creased with surprise and considerable irritation.

"Now what trouble have you got yourself in?" she asked with one brow raised, but in a kindly tone.

"As if the whole household didn't hear," Elizabeth responded, picking with great irritation at the hairpins which had scattered themselves over the comforter.

Curiosity shook her head. "I thought you had better hold of your temper than the judge."

"Ah, well." Elizabeth strode to her desk and began to pile books together. "There's only so much a person can bear."

"You want to go back to England?"

"No!" Elizabeth half turned. Her copy of Inferno slipped from the pile and suddenly the entire stack of books was sliding to the floor. She collapsed in a billow of skirts and began pulling them onto her lap. "I don't want to go. But what choice do I have?"

Curiosity was standing with her bony arms crossed, one toe tapping at the floorboards.

"Now who is this talking? Sound to me like some little girl don't know her own mind. Somebody who don't care about teaching school." Suddenly she leaned over and snapped up a book, held it out to Elizabeth.

"Of course I care," Elizabeth cried, taking the book from Curiosity. "But my father will stand in my way at every turn."

A smile from Curiosity was a rare thing, but she produced a grin.

"You listen here, Elizabeth," she said. "I been keeping house for your father for longer than you been pulling air, and my menfolk have run his farm for him just as long. We know him better than you do. Let me tell you—this ain't the worst idea ever come to you. Put a fright into him, see what good it bring. I'll have Galileo and Manny tote your trunks up here, and the judge'll be sweatin' so as he'll need to take off his hat or die of the heat."

Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself, a little bark of amusement.

Curiosity's eyes were narrowed, and she pursed her lips.

"You go on an laugh. But you listen, too. Sit up here on them trunks and listen to your daddy pacin' up and down the house wondering what stars he could pull out of the heavens to keep you here. Wondering if there's a ladder long enough. Thinking about it hard."