Her last coherent thought, before she drifted into sleep, was that she wished her mother were alive to explain it to her.
Darkness had fallen by the time she awoke. Propping herself up, she stared into the early-evening gloom. Across the room her mother’s diaries lay stacked on her dressing table. She’d half expected to find them open again—but no, it was her own memory guiding her this time, not some spirit she didn’t believe in anyway.
Rising from the bed, she selected the notebook she wanted and riffled through the pages until she located August and the death of Rebecca Clayton.
It was just as she remembered.
Except for the day of Rebecca’s death, Asenath did not visit her family home. She lay in bed at the Thomas house for days, refusing to get up—all because she’d seen six black crows and believed more people were going to die.
How, then, could she have eaten the honey cakes that poisoned the rest of her family?
Twenty-Seven
THE MANHUNT proved fruitless. John Thomas’s assailants were nowhere to be found. Popular opinion divided on whether they’d vanished into the Shades or merely hopped a train out of town.
A deputation of Catawissa men went so far as to search the Poole land. “They wouldn’t take our word that we didn’t have them,” Beulah remarked bitterly. Verity looked away, embarrassed and ashamed. It wasn’t her place to apologize for other people’s unjust actions, but she felt as if she ought to.
Three days passed without a visit or any word from Nate, and Verity experienced a deeper sense of loss each day he did not come. There was no sign of Mrs. McClure, either, who’d been planning to show Verity all the fabric swatches she’d ordered from Philadelphia. Verity understood this to mean that wedding plans had come to a halt.
She still wore Nate’s ring. On the day after the Fourth of July, she had taken it off and placed it inside one of her mother’s wooden boxes for safekeeping. An hour later she ran back to get it, sobbing. She didn’t want to give up Nate . . . but she couldn’t stop thinking about Hadley Jones, either.
Nate only wanted three words from her, but she wouldn’t say them unless she was certain they were true.
On the fourth day of Verity’s misery, Hattie came calling. Verity received her warily, wondering if she had brought a message from her brother, but it seemed to be an ordinary social call.
They talked about the events of the Fourth. Hattie asked about John Thomas’s injuries, and Verity was able to report that her uncle’s recovery seemed certain, although he had no memory of the event.
She’d almost begun to relax when Hattie placed her teacup on the serving table and said, “I know you and Nate have had a spat.”
Verity swallowed hard, feeling her tea go down her throat like a lump of unchewed bread.
Hattie waved her hand. “He didn’t ask me to come. But I thought . . . well, I always had two older sisters to advise me on matters like this, and you don’t have anyone. Is it too forward of me to offer myself for the position?”
Verity surveyed the young woman opposite. She had indeed longed for a confidante, but she couldn’t possibly confess her muddled feelings for Hadley Jones to Nate’s sister.
Decisively, Hattie rose and moved to sit next to Verity. “You realize it’s customary for a bride-to-be to feel nervous, don’t you?” she asked. “And irritable . . . and thinking she’s made a mistake.”
“Oh!” Verity gasped, startled to hear her own thoughts expressed out loud. “Hattie, I’m so very fond of him, but he’s angry with me right now, and I hardly blame him. I don’t know what to do.”
“Nate suffers from the misconception that he’s always right. He just needs a firm hand, and you mustn’t let nerves frighten you away.” Hattie clucked regretfully. “When William went away to war, I cried every single day, afraid he would never come back to me. And when he did come back—why, I cried even harder, because then I had to redeem my promise and marry him!”
Verity couldn’t suppress her smile at that.
Hattie smiled back. “And Carrie! Oh, my! Carrie and Timothy had a row so terrible a few weeks before their wedding, we thought they might call the whole thing off!” She leaned closer and said in her loud whisper, “Nobody knows what they fought about, but everybody knows how they made amends. Little Timmy was born only seven months after the wedding.”
Verity inhaled so sharply, she sucked down a mouthful of tea. Surely Hattie wasn’t suggesting . . .
The older girl’s eyes twinkled as she patted her coughing hostess on the back. “All’s well that ends well. And men are such simple things, really. So easy to please.”
Hattie was wrong. Men were perplexing and complicated.
A letter arrived that afternoon. Beulah handed it to Verity with a raised eyebrow. The handwriting on the envelope was unfamiliar, but Verity knew immediately whose it was. With a guilty glance at the housekeeper, she took it upstairs to read.
Dear Miss Boone,
First of all, I owe you an apology for my conduct the other night. No gentleman would have taken advantage of your emotional state, nor any proper physician, either. I’m afraid I’ve made a poor showing at both occupations.
I know that my second statement will make me out to be a cad of the lowest sort. After repeatedly making my interest known to you, even though your affections were otherwise engaged, I must tell you now that I can offer you no future. For a time I hoped to make my home and my living here in Catawissa, and I would have been proud to do so with a woman like you at my side. However, circumstances have changed, and I find myself in a position of uncertainty. I have no doubt you will make a happy life with Mr. McClure and remember me with derision for this abrupt change of face. I can only say that I will, in turn, remember you as the one bright moment in a difficult time.
Sincerely and regretfully,
Hadley Jones
So now he didn’t want her. She’d made a fool of herself and compromised her values over someone of fickle temperament. She ought to have expected this, because what good man, after all, would have pursued another man’s intended bride?
Verity took the letter downstairs and, while Beulah was occupied outside, burned it in the stove. Somehow, as she watched it disintegrate to ash, she couldn’t muster any anger toward Hadley Jones.
Instead, she felt a strange, nagging worry for him.
The next morning Nate drove by the house in his family’s carriage. Verity leaped to her feet, dumping Lucky out of her lap, and burst out through the front door. He was already past the house by the time she got outside, and tears of disappointment welled in her eyes.
But he’d seen her, apparently, and even as he reached the point where she thought he wasn’t going to stop, he did. When the carriage came to a halt, she walked down the steps and across the grass to meet him.
He still looked angry, she thought, trying to read his face as he came toward her. She knew what she ought to say to him, but when she was close enough to speak, she found herself unable to. She grabbed his coat with both hands and pressed her tearful face against the front of his shirt. After a moment, Nate put his arms around her. With her cheek against his chest, she could hear his heart beating almost as fast as hers, the familiar feel and scent of him a comfort to her.
Just tell him what he wants to hear, she told herself.
But she couldn’t. There was something shameful about saying it now, right after Hadley Jones had rejected her—as if she loved him because he was the only choice left.
Nate deserved better than that.
When Verity didn’t speak, Nate loosened his hold on her and stepped back. She let go of him reluctantly, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
“There’s been a telegram from Tamaqua,” he said, without addressing the unspoken rift between them. “They think they have our men.”
That was good news, even if she was more worried about the ruins of her engagement than about capturing the men who had assaulted her uncle.
“I’m
taking Mr.Thomas on the train to see if he can identify them,” Nate went on. “He’s not recovered enough to go by himself.”
“But Uncle John says he never saw them.”
Nate lowered his voice. “Nobody believes that, Verity. This is somehow related to his gambling. He’s in trouble with these fellows, and he doesn’t want to admit it. But I’m taking Piper and the twins as well. They saw both men, in daylight. Perhaps your uncle will come to his senses when he sees these men in custody.”
Verity wrapped both arms around herself nervously. “I hope it’s the right men.”
He nodded. “I do too. But just in case, don’t go anywhere alone.”
“I promise,” she said. She wished it were as easy to promise him everything he wanted. She was abruptly struck by the desire to tell him everything she felt, all her contradictory worries, tangled emotions, and lingering doubts. Perhaps the only way to understand her feelings for him was to express them out loud.
But Nate was already walking away, headed back to the carriage. He glanced back at her, and she was certain his eyes passed over the ring on her hand.
“We’ll talk when I get back,” he said gruffly.
Verity stood there, rooted to the ground, and watched him leave without kissing her goodbye, without even looking back a second time.
Nate didn’t want her anymore either.
Twenty-Eight
VERITY SPENT the day in tears. She’d gone from two suitors to none, and still she was befuddled in her mind and heart. One moment she trembled from head to toe at the thought of Nate McClure asking her to return his ring; the next she considered marching into town to confront Hadley Jones and demand an explanation.
When she answered the door to Liza in the late afternoon, she was in no mood to be polite. “What do you want?” she asked abruptly, glancing briefly at Johnny, who stood sullenly behind his sister.
Liza lifted her head like an animal scenting something interesting on the wind. Clearly she had noticed Verity’s swollen eyes and blotchy skin. “Reverend White sent a note telling us to take down the bunting in the cemetery. He said we’ve left it too long already, and it’ll get ruined in the rain tonight.”
Verity looked at the sky. It didn’t look like rain to her.
Liza put her hands on her hips. “Mother told Johnny and me to do it, but you helped put them up, so you ought to do your fair share taking them down.”
“Asking nicely was all you needed to do, Liza. Let me get a basket, and I’ll go with you.” Spending the afternoon in the graveyard suited Verity’s mood perfectly.
The White house was shut up tightly, Verity noted, with curtains all drawn and windows closed in spite of the hot day. She assumed, rather sourly, that Mrs. White didn’t want to accidentally catch sight of them and feel obligated to assist.
Liza went first to their grandparents’ graves, carefully folding up each decorative drape. Johnny looked as unhappy as boys usually did when asked to do girls’ work. He wandered aimlessly through the grounds, ripping bunting from the headstones and throwing it over his shoulder. Verity attended to the caged graves, and then, because she knew nobody else would, she took time with the Clayton graves—first outside the cemetery and then inside.
“You needn’t bother.” Liza had come up behind her while she was pulling weeds from around Rebecca Clayton’s headstone. “Nobody cares.”
“I care.” Verity yanked handfuls of clover out and flung them aside. “Even if there’s no longer a body buried here, the memorial stone can still look nice.”
After a moment of silence, Liza said, “But there is a body in there.”
Verity shook her head. “It was stolen.”
Liza crossed her arms. “No, it wasn’t. They put it back when they were through with it.”
“You can’t tell me grave robbers returned her body,” Verity exclaimed.
“Hey!” Johnny yelled from halfway across the cemetery. “If you aren’t working, neither am I!”
Liza threw him an angry look, then turned back to Verity. “What are you talking about? What grave robbers? It was Eli Clayton who did it; everybody knows that.”
“Did what, Liza? What happened at this grave?” She was so tired of secrets and lies and misbegotten legends!
“Why do you think your father put a cage over your mother’s grave?”
Verity rose to her feet and faced her cousin. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
Johnny stuck his head between them. “What’re you two arguing about?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Liza looked triumphant.
“About what?” Johnny asked.
“She doesn’t know why there’s a cage over her mother’s grave!”
“To keep people from chopping her up.” Johnny looked back and forth between Verity and Liza.
Verity winced at his words. “That’s right,” she agreed. “Medical students.”
“Who told you that?” Liza demanded. “That’s nonsense!”
“Then what did happen? For pity’s sake, won’t one of you just tell me?”
Liza pointed a finger at the place where Rebecca lay. “She died. Then other people in her family got sick. A whole bunch of them. They thought it was the family curse—a blood curse, because Silas Clayton betrayed his comrades and his country, and every one of his descendants is destined to pay the price. They thought Rebecca had come back from the grave to kill her kin, just like Caleb got out of his coffin and tried to kill his wife. So Eli Clayton dug her up and cut her body into pieces.”
Verity stepped backward. She felt lightheaded, as if all her blood had rushed toward her feet.
“That’s what the mountain people do if they think someone’s not completely dead,” Liza went on. “Her own father chopped off her arms and her legs and her head. Then he cut out her heart and burned it.”
Johnny licked his lips nervously. “Stop it, Liza.”
“He fed the ashes to the people who were sick, and those people recovered.” Liza’s eyes were alight with malice. “The other ones who died—he chopped them up before they went into the ground, just in case. That’s why the cages are there. Our family built them so the Claytons would think Sarah Ann and Asenath couldn’t get out—but mostly so the Claytons couldn’t get in. Grandmother told me. That’s the truth.”
Verity’s limbs had gone numb with cold, even in the heat of July. She staggered and tripped on her skirts, falling to the ground in a heap. Liza smiled in satisfaction and returned to the bunting, while Johnny stood there, looking back and forth between his cousin and sister.
This was a terrible, backward place—full of ignorant, violent people. Why had she ever come here? She wanted to go home—to Worcester—to a civilized place where things like this didn’t happen.
She might as well go back to Worcester. Nate had loved her, but she’d spoiled it with her doubts. And Hadley Jones had never wanted anything but a dalliance. She ought to pack her things and take the first morning train . . . back to Aunt Maryett, who was the closest thing to a mother she’d ever known.
Verity lifted her head. She could just make out, on the other side of the cemetery wall, her mother’s headstone:
SARAH ANN
Wife of Ransloe Boone
Her father had lived alone with his grief, guarding his wife’s grave, for fifteen years. No matter how humiliated and brokenhearted she was, Verity couldn’t abandon him.
“Cousin Verity, are you all right?” Johnny leaned over her. He pulled a handkerchief, expertly starched and ironed by his mother, out of his pocket and offered it to her. “I don’t know why Liza has to be so cruel. That is, I guess I do know. She likes your fellow. But he never even looked at her.”
Gratefully, Verity pressed the boy’s handkerchief to her face.
“Mother puts such thoughts in her head, but you’re so pretty,” Johnny said. “If I were Nathaniel, I wouldn’t look twice at Liza, especially if you were my—I mean—”
She needed to stop her twelv
e-year-old cousin before he ended up pledging his love to her. “Johnny—” She broke off and stared past him, over his shoulder. “Who’s that? Do you know that man?”
A young man with long, straggly locks of reddish-blond hair was talking to Liza on the other side of the cemetery. He awkwardly tried to drape a wreath of flowers over a grave, and she approached him to lend a hand.
Because the young man had only one hand of his own.
“No,” said Johnny. “I’ve never seen him before.”
Verity scrambled to her feet, recognizing the patient she’d overheard arguing with Hadley Jones last week. Even before the thinking part of her brain had caught up with her instinct, she was sprinting across the cemetery. “Liza, run!” she yelled.
Liza looked back with annoyance and did the exact opposite, stepping within reach of the one-armed young man—the one whose voice, Verity now realized, had spoken from the shadows in the alley on the night of the Fourth of July.
When he saw Verity running toward them, he tossed the flowers aside and grabbed Liza around the throat with his one hand. Liza staggered, her hands clawing uselessly at the one clenched around her neck. Then, recovering her wits, she started beating at his face.
Seeing Liza fight back, Verity diverted her path, her eye on a fallen tree branch, thick and sturdy. She scooped it up and kept running. This fellow had only one hand and could barely hold on to Liza. How could he harm Verity?
Hefting the branch over one shoulder, she ran straight at him. He jerked back and yanked Liza under his foreshortened arm, wrapping it tightly around her throat. Then his hand snaked into his coat pocket.
Verity skidded to a halt, a revolver leveled directly at her head.
“Drop it, Miss Boone,” he said, staring her down. His eyes were a surprising light blue.
The Caged Graves Page 18
