A shudder ran through Elizabeth, so that her whole body shook. “You think she expects to die?”

“No,” Curiosity said. “The girl come home because she want to live.”

Chapter XXI

Since Martha’s first eventful outing to the village, Curiosity seemed to find a reason to send her every day, sometimes twice.

Today she was supposed to take a pound of salt, a jar of tea, and a loaf of new bread to Joshua at the smithy. Joshua was Curiosity’s son-in-law and she was always sending little things over to him or to her daughter Daisy. The Hench family lived on the other side of the village up high on the hillside, with three married children in their own small houses in a half circle, like chicks to a hen. Curiosity had bought the land with her own money and then gifted it to her Daisy and Joshua, who had in turned divided it up among those three children who had married on in Paradise.

It had turned cold again, and Martha wore her warmest things. It was good to be out in the open, and she made it down to the village without falling even once. She might run into someone who wished her ill—Alice LeBlanc or Baldy O’Brien were the first names that came to her—but she would do everything in her power to maintain her dignity.

A flock of geese was coming toward her on the lane, waddling with a purpose, propelled by a young girl with a stick and a very serious expression. She dropped her head in shyness or uncertainty before Martha could greet her, much less ask her name. One of the Blackhouse girls, Martha thought, though she couldn’t be sure.

It was a beautifully clear day, and the air was clean and sharp. All around the evergreens were alive with the wind. The faintest smell of spring was in the air, a sweetness that meant the first flush of color was about to show itself, a green so tender that it verged on the color of April butter.

She would be here if it should happen tomorrow or weeks from now. For once that thought didn’t upset her. Martha still woke in the morning expecting to see her room in the house on Whitehall Street, but the disappointment that followed didn’t last through the day, as it once had.

The turn in her state of mind had come the very day she sent the packet with Teddy’s pearl ring and watched until the post rider disappeared.

And if the weather were to turn wintery again? Would her spirits survive that?

Blizzards in late April were not all that rare. As a girl she had feared such storms, because they kept her indoors with Jemima. As she had been the day that Callie’s mother walked past the kitchen windows, heading up the mountain and into a blizzard dressed as though she were going to see a neighbor on a Sunday afternoon in May.

A court of law could not find Jemima guilty of murder, but her neighbors had their own way of seeing things and an older, much bloodier understanding of the law. Jemima had not reached out to stop Dolly Wilde from walking into the storm, nor had she allowed Martha to go after her. A bullet would have been kinder, people had said.

Today there was no snow, but it might come. All around the forests seemed untouched, untouchable. Waiting for winter’s last breath.

As she came into the village proper the sound of voices and saws and hammers came up from the river. The building of the new bridge was something that interested everybody and there would be onlookers. No place for Martha, at least not yet.

As she passed the schoolhouse something caught her attention. Martha stopped to study it for a moment and realized that someone had painted a neat black line on the wall of the schoolhouse, about a foot in length and considerably higher than Martha’s line of sight. Six feet, four inches high, declared the writing below it. There was verse too. Her curiosity got the better of her and she went closer, up on tiptoe, to read it.

To this high point the flood water reached
when the hundred-year water breached
the banks of the mighty Sacandaga.

∼Anno MDCCCXXIV∼

Standing as she was, she sensed rather than saw someone coming to the window just above her and to the right.

Daniel, of course.

Martha held very still, studying the verse on the wall and waiting for him to turn away.

They had seen each other many times since the unhappy episode with Baldy O’Brien at the Red Dog. She always smiled and nodded; Daniel smiled and inclined his head. Quite often he ate his dinner or his supper at his mother’s table and sometimes stayed into the evening to sit in the parlor and talk. The evening visits were great fun. Every one of the Bonners was an excellent storyteller, and sometimes they would sing or Elizabeth would read aloud from books that her cousins sent her from England and Manhattan. Twice Simon had carried Lily all the way from the village so that she could sit with all her family at once. On those evenings every one of the Bonners did their best to make her laugh, Daniel most especially.

Martha found it was hard not to let her eyes follow him around the room.

At night these short meetings kept her awake and sermonizing to herself. Really, did she mean to make a fool of herself mooning over Daniel Bonner? What kind of weak-willed person was she? She had been engaged to marry Teddy just weeks ago and now her head was full of someone else. It would simply not do.

But still, if she heard Daniel’s name raised in a conversation she could not help but stop and listen. Sooner or later someone would notice, and her reputation would be compromised once and for all.

And now Daniel Bonner was standing there watching her. Martha recited to herself a list of facts: He was ten years her senior; he was a veteran of the last war, and a schoolteacher. He was without the use of his left arm, but he managed well enough. He could have any unmarried woman he wanted. He was friendly but not overbearing, and she could not predict what he might say or do, from one moment to the next.