“My second cousin Belinda is coming,” Oxley told them. “A widow with two children of her own, older boys.”

So the women gossiping in the village had been right. A man like this one must remarry quickly or lose his children. James Oxley had acted quickly, and Martha liked him for it. Callie’s father had not dealt so well with loss and disappointment, while Martha had never once seen her own father in the flesh.

Finally they walked in silence for a while. Martha wondered if the men were still thinking of the Oxleys or if their minds had gone on to other things, the evening ahead or the work that waited tomorrow, whether it would be necessary to go to Johnstown for supplies before long, the things that needed mending, chairs and traps, a hoe, shingles.

The women’s minds were still with the Oxleys, there was no doubt of that. Jennet had a look Martha had come to recognize, determined to accomplish something others told her she could not. The Oxleys wouldn’t want for clothes or food as long as Jennet had a say. Hannah kept her thoughts better hidden, but Ben must have known what was going on behind those dark eyes, because he leaned over and whispered something in her ear and she laughed and batted at him. With that the melancholy spell was broken and they began to talk again.

The woods thinned and then they were in the strawberry fields, a long narrow meadow that would be fragrant with fruit in the height of summer. As girls she and Callie had often played in the ruins of an old cabin right off the deer path that angled from one corner to the other, but even that had changed. A newer house stood where the old cabin had been. This one was larger, and in the shape of an L with a porch across the front. Daniel Bonner’s place, then. She had known about it but never come so far up the mountain to see it on any of her visits. It hadn’t interested her enough then, but she was interested now. Her pace slowed as they passed so she could take in more details.

There was one old oak in the meadow, close enough to the house to provide shade in summer. Daniel had planted a few more trees to make a half circle that would protect the spot from the worst of the winter winds, once they had grown in. There was no garden unless it was on the other side of the small barn.

The house itself she recognized as similar to the ones Ethan had built on the Johnstown road. Not fancy or fussy, but pleasing to the eye. She had been expecting a cabin similar to the one she had grown up in: two rooms at the most, and just as many small windows to break up the squared log walls chinked with clay.

Martha was looking so hard that she walked right into Ethan, who had come to a stop on the path without her notice. He grabbed her shoulders before she could fall over.

Jennet said, “He’s gone ahead to Lake in the Clouds, or we might invite ourselves in.”

Her tone was unremarkable, but Martha was aware of the way the others were holding themselves, as if they were intruding on something private. Martha might have corrected them. She could have said there was nothing to be secretive about; she had no claim on Daniel nor he on her. If she felt some inexplicable urge to tell everything, all she could confess to was a few conversations. The only time he had touched her was to help her up out of the mud, and of course there was the episode with the hat—

“We’re losing the light,” said Luke and so they went on. Martha resisted the urge for one look back at the cabin and concentrated on keeping up with the others, now that they were in the woods again and the way was growing steeper.

A nightjar called and its mate answered, and Martha’s skin rose in goose bumps all along her spine.

Daniel stood out of sight in the woods for no other reason than to watch Martha Kirby.

The party passed single file on the narrow path, Luke up ahead, Ben at the rear, Ethan in the middle, all of them carrying their rifles cradled and ready. Ben looked up to the spot where Daniel stood out of sight, and for a moment Daniel was sure he had been sensed if not seen. But if Ben knew he was not willing to show himself, he also knew why and was not in a hurry to draw attention to Daniel’s odd behavior.

Because it was odd. He had come right out and made his interest in Martha clear at the dinner table, after all. He had startled himself, speaking up so early when it was clear that Martha was interested but not ready, not yet, to consider him. His own interest, the depth of it, unsettled him. Now Daniel watched Martha, who walked the path through the woods with the easy stride of someone who had grown up on this mountain. Contained within herself, but aware of everything. As she moved away Daniel told himself she could be anyone. Any woman running an errand, a basket on one arm and another on her back, the very last of the sunlight tracing her shape, gilding the curve of her shoulder. The light caught her hair and set the red in it to sparkling.

He had yet to kiss her. There was nothing more between them than some teasing and a few conversations that he remembered word for word. And the fact that some nineteen years ago he had come upon her mother and father coupling in the light of day, in the hour she was conceived, as Lily had reminded him.

When they were gone far enough ahead that he could no longer hear them, Daniel got up and followed.

Chapter XXVIII

Birdie knew she was being unreasonable, but she was out of sorts, though she had tried hard to hide it all day. The little people had all been put to bed—though by the thumping that came from overhead, she was sure they were far from asleep—and she was allowed to stay up, which was a very good thing. On the other hand, it seemed she would never be old enough to go to ice-out at Lake in the Clouds. Today she had asked Da when she might be asked along and he had put his hand on her head and rocked it back and forth.