Once they had agreed on a course of action, everyone had scattered. Martha and Daniel left for home while Ethan and Callie and Hannah herself had gone in the other direction. Simon took Curiosity to see Jennet and Lily, who had been alone far too long and who would need to hear the news about Jemima. Luke and Ben had gone back to the village to round up the little people, and she, determined to bring Jemima to heel, had set off to see her, alone.

As the Red Dog came into view Elizabeth realized that the news of Jemima’s arrival would have already spread through the village. This was clear to her because there was a small crowd outside the Red Dog, people who normally would not have left the lakeside until very late, when the fireworks had come and gone. Jemima was come, and there would be more rumors about where she had been and why she was back like this, without her husband. They would be trading opinions and theories fueled by ale and high spirits. Elizabeth could almost read it in their faces.

Except they weren’t looking at her, but beyond her, so that when Nathaniel’s hand settled on her shoulder she stopped and leaned back against him in relief.

“Married all these years,” he said. “And you’re still making me run after you.”

Becca came outside just then and started right for them, her arms crossed tight at her waist, as if she were in physical pain.

“Elizabeth,” she said in a low voice. “Nathaniel. I want you to know I had no idea about Jemima coming back. She never wrote to me. I didn’t even know she was here until an hour ago. It was Alice and Joan who arranged it all with her, and I hope you know they are sorry just now that they were ever brought into this world. Almost as sorry as I am for the trouble they have caused.”

Elizabeth managed a small but reassuring smile. “Becca, you have nothing to apologize for.”

“I have Alice,” Becca said, bitterly. “And I have Joan. I have took the liberty of telling Joan she won’t be coming back to work for you anymore. I’ll see to it you get somebody better deserving of your trust. I just don’t understand, after all the stories I told of Jemima as a girl, and the misery she was to me when we went into service together. How terrible she was after she tricked Isaiah into marrying her, to me and Cookie both. I said to them, I said, whatever she promised you, you can forget about. Jemima Southern never kept a promise in her life. She’s using you like she uses everybody.”

Becca drew in a breath to steady herself.

Nathaniel said, “Becca, there’s no call for you to work yourself up this way. Put Jemima out of your head.”

Becca took a darting look around herself, leaned forward, and dropped her voice even lower.

“Is it true she’s real sick?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“And that tomorrow she’s moving up to the strawberry fields so Martha can look after her?”

“No,” Nathaniel said firmly. “Unless you kick her out she’ll be staying right where she is. Curiosity and Hannah will manage nursing her between them.”

“It’s cowardly of me, but I don’t want to be the one to tell her she’s not going to Martha’s,” Becca said.

“On the contrary,” Elizabeth said. “It is proof of your native good sense.”

That got a smile from Becca.

“If you were hoping to speak to her just now, I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “After she heard the news about Lenora getting married she threw a fit, and now she’s locked her door and says she won’t see anybody before Hannah comes back to talk to her.” She bit her lower lip hard enough to break the skin. “I knew she’d be trouble. I knew I should have turned her out that first time she showed up. You could just kick down the door, Nathaniel. I wouldn’t mind one bit.”

“I think not,” Elizabeth said. “We’ll just wait for Hannah. She will be here very shortly.”

“Maybe we could get some of your cider while we’re waiting,” Nathaniel said. “This heat gives a man a thirst.”

Chapter LXIII

Hannah cut across the Mayfairs’ pasture, the most direct path to the middle of the village where she was most likely to find the little people. She wished she knew where her stepmother was. Elizabeth would be the right person to take along on this errand; she was one of the few people Jemima seemed to respect, in a limited way.

Sometime between this moment and finding Nicholas she’d have to think about how to tell the boy the things he needed to know, and prepare him for his mother’s condition. She was still thinking about this when she was caught up in the crowd impatient to start dancing. They filled the open space that stretched from the trading post to the school-house, full of energy and excitement and, many of them, an excess of ale. In their middle Levi stood on a small wooden stage, his fiddle already tucked up under his chin. Next to him was Maurice Petit, a French trapper who had made a name for himself calling out dance steps in his own particular way. Over ten years he had developed a patter that added a lot of laughter to what had once been a fairly serious business of trying to remember complex steps. Some claimed that they couldn’t dance anymore unless Maurice was there telling them which way to go, bouncing up and down on his toes like a puppet on a string.

People were calling out suggestions, and Levi was nodding and smiling. It always went this way; Levi held a cupped hand to his ear and made a serious face while people shouted up at him. Then he played what he wanted to play. While Hannah watched, Levi and Maurice launched into “Sweet Peas,” and the crowd hollered its appreciation. Even over that noise Maurice could be heard, and in fact the children called him Moose Maurice for the way he bellowed.