Hope Springs (Longing for Home - book 2, A Proper Romance)

by Sarah M. Eden

  Emma was not at the candy display. Apparently she’d made her purchase and slipped out quietly. Katie hadn’t even heard the door chime.

  She bent down to gather up the ribbons. ’Twas an unfortunate thing Mr. Johnson had taken the “lace” box back with him. Keeping all the spools in her arms without any spilling over would be a juggling act.

  Katie piled them one by one into her arms, the stack nearly reaching her chin. She stood awkwardly, trying to keep the ribbons balanced. Mr. Johnson had disturbed her nearly perfect arrangement of handkerchiefs. She’d have to return to fix that, but he seemed more concerned with the ribbons at the moment.

  She managed to carry her unstable load all the way to the tall shelves where sat boxes and baskets of smaller goods. Buttons, ribbons, thread, needles, and other sewing notions. Every container was labeled in letters she could not read. It seemed the boxes were in as desperate a state of disarray as the rest of the mercantile. She ought not to have assumed the contents and the labels matched.

  A few spools slid from her grasp.

  “Your job is to clean, not make a mess.” Mr. Johnson spoke without even looking up at her.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And keep quiet. I don’t want to hear your voice the rest of the day.”

  She set the spools in a small pile at the base of the shelves.

  Silence for the rest of the day? That shouldn’t be hard. She hadn’t been much of a talker before coming to Hope Springs. Keeping quiet had simply been part of being a servant. Joseph had spoiled her for that. He talked to her and encouraged her to keep up the conversation. She was treated with kindness. She’d almost forgotten that was not normal.

  She looked over the boxes and baskets and realized she had something of a puzzle staring at her. She was to put the ribbons in their correct box, but she couldn’t read a single word. She didn’t know which box she was looking for. And she was not supposed to talk.

  How do I get around this difficulty, Eimear?

  She couldn’t simply look inside all the boxes. That method had put her in this difficulty in the first place. She would simply have to ask.

  “Mr. Johnson, I—”

  “I said no more talking.”

  “I don’t know where to put the ribbon.”

  His head jerked up, eyes snapping with annoyance. “In the ribbon box.” He spoke slowly.

  Katie held herself perfectly still, enduring the barb without so much as a wince. This was old, familiar territory. “Which is the—?”

  “Read the labels, you half-wit.”

  The word struck her like a slap. Half-wit. Confessing she couldn’t read would convince him of that even more. Perhaps he was right. But she couldn’t do her work properly if he didn’t read the labels for her.

  Pride was a fickle companion. It seldom improved a situation.

  “I cannot read, sir. Not a word.”

  His first look was one of surprise. “Can’t read? Why, even that child who just left can read. My own little Marianne can read.”

  She might have defended herself with arguments over opportunities and education, but the words died unspoken. She stood in silence, as she’d been ordered to.

  “No wonder your people are such a plague.” Mr. Johnson turned back to his papers.

  “If you’ll but tell me where to put the ribbons, Mr. Johnson.”

  He slowly turned his head toward the shelves. “Third shelf from the top, second basket from the right. Or can’t you count either?”

  She let the insult pass and set back to her work. She need only endure a little while longer, then she could return to the peace and quiet of Granny’s house. That would become her daily routine, she imagined.

  The door chimed once again. Another customer.

  Katie spoke without looking back. “Do you want me to step into the storage room?”

  “I want you to shut up.”

  She closed her eyes and her heart to his words. If she let him wound her, she would eventually die inside.

  “I told you, Papa. There she is.”

  Hearing Emma’s voice pulled Katie around. Sure enough, there the child stood with her father at her side, both looking at Katie.

  “What can I do for you, Joseph?” Mr. Johnson spoke respectfully, with deference and consideration.

  She stood at the shelves, too embarrassed to flee and too afraid she’d lose her position if she even attempted to explain.

  Joseph’s gaze traveled between her and Mr. Johnson. His expression had often been unreadable in the first weeks she’d known him. In the months that had followed, she thought she’d come to understand him better. But she couldn’t say at all what he was thinking.

  “Emma came for a butterscotch.” Though Joseph spoke without the slightest hint of a question, Katie sensed something hovering beneath the surface of his words.

  “Of course.” Mr. Johnson moved quickly around the counter to join Joseph and Emma at the candy jars. “I hoped you would come back and pick out your sweet.”

  Katie faced the shelves. She pulled down the third-down-second-over box. Kneeling on the floor, she set the ribbon spools neatly inside, organizing them by color. Mr. Johnson could not with any degree of honesty complain about how hard she worked. He likely would complain, but the complaints wouldn’t be warranted.

  She slid the box, now nearly full, back into its place on the shelf. As she turned to slip into the back room, she found Joseph standing directly beside her.

  She opened her mouth to say hello but closed it again immediately. She didn’t want to endure another scolding. All she needed to do was finish out her morning. If she could manage that without being yelled at again, she might not spend her walk home fighting tears of exhaustion and humiliation.

  “Emma said Mr. Johnson called you a simpleton.”

  She glanced at Mr. Johnson. Though he stood near Emma as she looked at the sweets display, his eyes were on Katie and Joseph. She wasn’t supposed to talk. She looked back at Joseph, silently pleading with him not to press her for an answer.

  He proved very uncooperative. “She also told me he was yelling at you and threw a box of ribbons at your head.”

  She just shook her head no, keeping her lips tightly closed.

  Tavish, of all people, spoke next. “I’d wager Miss Emma had the right of it.”

  Katie spun about. Tavish stood at the counter, looking over the lot of them with a confused lift of one ebony eyebrow. Katie hadn’t even heard the door chime.

  “Have you sunk so low as to throw things at women’s heads?” Tavish spoke to Mr. Johnson, though his eyes darted back to her more than once.

  “No. At Irish heads, and only the insufferably incompetent ones.”

  Katie made to move to the storage room, away from his complaints and out of sight of Joseph and Tavish, but Joseph took hold of her hand. His gaze hadn’t left her face. His earlier question still lingered in his expression. What is going on?

  Mr. Johnson caught her eye. “Not one word, Paddy,” he muttered. He stood with his arms folded across his chest. At least he wasn’t flashing that feigned smile he so often wore for the Irish. That smile always made her feel uneasy.

  She couldn’t bring herself to even look at the two men. She hoped Emma wasn’t too upset by the confrontation.

  Mr. Johnson yanked the door to the storage room open and nodded for her to step inside. “You can work in here for the rest of the day.”

  She gave a quick nod of her head, pulled her hand away from Joseph’s, and stepped inside.

  “Don’t ever forget,” Mr. Johnson spat at her as she passed, “I could have driven every last one of you out of here. Without clothes or food, this Irish scourge would have been gone for good, and y’all would have run straight back to where you came from.”

  He snapped the door shut. Whatever conversation or confrontation took place in the shop, she was not privy to it. She stood in the storage room for several long moments without moving, simply attempting to reassure herself t
hat all would be well in time. But the peace she looked for, the sense of calm contentment, didn’t come. She didn’t believe in second sight or premonitions, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the path ahead of her was anything but smooth.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Having an Irish Road meeting called a mere two days before the entire town was scheduled to take their harvests to the depot did not bode well. Something had to have upset a good number of people or else the gathering would have been postponed. Tavish stepped inside his parents’ home in a less-than-optimistic frame of mind.

  He acknowledged his brothers-in-law with a quick nod and exchanged a questioning glance with Da. His father looked out over the gathering of men.

  “Seamus,” Da said, “you had a concern to bring before everyone.”

  Seamus stood. His blacksmith’s build was intimidating, even to those who knew him well. But it was the fearsome look on his face that made Tavish nervous. Seamus was fun and lively, until he was riled. The man, Tavish had heard tell, had been part of the Young Irelanders Rebellion in ’48. Seamus had, if the story was true, spent time in prison for his role in that uprising and had either been released or had escaped. There were moments when Tavish saw in Seamus’s expression just enough fury to make him believe every rumor he’d heard about Seamus’s past.

  “How many of you are missing chickens?”

  It would have been an odd question if Tavish himself hadn’t noticed both he and Ian were short a few laying hens. Every hand around the room was raised.

  Not a good sign at all.

  “That’s what we were afraid of.” Seamus frowned. “Though I’d not like to make an accusation without some proof”—Seamus had done that more than once—“this seems too big a problem to be a coincidence.”

  A few noises of agreement answered that declaration. Tavish glanced at Da. He looked as uncomfortable as Tavish felt.

  “I’d wager,” Seamus continued, “we’re not experiencing an early winter migration amongst our domestic fowl.”

  The smiles at that were heavily tinged with uncertainty, worry even.

  “It seems to me,” Seamus said, “someone’s making off with our birds.”

  “The Red Road, no doubt.” Eoin O’Donaghue spoke what the rest were thinking, even Tavish.

  Seamus eyed them all in turn. “It’s not been many weeks since Tavish’s horse had its tail clipped and its body bruised in the incident.”

  Tavish was still angry at that, though he’d done his best to stay calm.

  “Ian O’Connor couldn’t even be here with us tonight, as he’s not yet recovered enough from the Reds’ cowardly attack.” Seamus had entirely lost his light and cheery storyteller’s voice. This was as near to a call-to-arms as Tavish had heard in a few years. “Now they’re on our road at night, sneaking onto our land, making off with our animals. They’ve brought this fight to us, no matter that we’ve tried to keep the peace.”

  Matthew Scott spoke up. “Just what would you have us do, Seamus? We can’t prove they’ve done anything, and even if we could, would not provoking them leave us open to far worse things than missing chickens?”

  Seamus was not always the most patient of men, but he took no offense at the question. “Times are perilous. We, none of us, can deny that.”

  “Certainly not,” a voice in the crowd answered cautiously.

  “But how long do you imagine we have before the mercantile decides to raise prices despite Katie’s admirable efforts?” Seamus asked. “How long before the Red Road goes fully on the attack and we, as always, suffer for it?”

  Worry etched into every face. Tavish knew what they were feeling. He’d felt it himself for weeks. Trouble was brewing again, and they all knew far too well what came next.

  “Do you think they’ll make more mischief before the harvest exodus?” Matthew asked.

  Seamus gave a firm nod.

  Tavish offered a slightly different opinion. “Bear in mind, the lot of them are getting ready to sell their grain just like we are. The workload this next week will be too great for much troublemaking.”

  Eyes slid in Da’s direction. He’d often been looked to as a voice of wisdom. Too bad Seamus so often undermined that with his relentless determination to rush into a fight with shillelaghs flying.

  “This won’t come to a head before the harvest run,” Da said. “But neither do I think we’ll have uninterrupted peace and quiet until then. I’d advise watchfulness and great care. Keep an eye out for one another, but keep peaceable and calm. This feud will still be here when we all return.”

  “And what of the womenfolk?” Seamus shot back. “They’ll be here without their husbands and fathers.”

  “Admit it, Seamus,” Tavish called out, “the women aren’t the problem in this town. If we leave them here long enough on their own, they’re likely to solve our difficulties all neat and tidy.”

  The group chuckled at that. Nothing about the feud was actually so simple, but the women were by far the most peaceable group in Hope Springs, excepting perhaps the children.

  The meeting dispersed with no more conclusion than that. Apparently they were all going to watch and see what happened. ’Twasn’t exactly a vote of confidence, simply resignation. The feud would flare; they all knew that much. There was simply no knowing when, nor just how hot the flames would burn.

  Tavish hung back as everyone else filed out. He needed to talk to Da.

  “I’ve not seen Ian today,” Tavish said when the room was empty again. “How is he?”

  “Better a bit at a time. Biddy’s sinking under the weight of it all, but your ma means to rally a few of the Irishwomen to her cause.”

  Tavish had no doubt Ma would have things firmly in hand in no time.

  “I’ve a feeling,” Da said, “it’s not your brother you truly wish to inquire after.”

  Nothing got past him. “I’m worried about Katie.”

  “Aye, poor lass.” Da shook his head. “As if we’d not put enough weight on her shoulders, now she bears the burden of our very survival, but with no actual power to see it through.”

  Poor Katie, indeed. “Johnson was vicious to her today. I was only there for a few minutes, but he had me spitting mad. Called her terrible names and spoke down to her. We cannot expect her to endure that.”

  Da sat near the fire, lighting his pipe. “What else is she to do? If she quits, the prices will go up again, perhaps higher than they were.”

  “If she continues as she is, they might still go up. And she’ll have suffered needlessly.” Tavish paced toward the fireplace. “I’ve tried convincing her to walk away, before things have gone too far. At this point there’d still be time to come up with a new solution.”

  Da gave him a look generally reserved for Tavish’s least intelligent moments. “Dictating to a woman of her determination will get you nowhere, lad.”

  “I cannot just leave her in that situation. I was there this morning, Da, and saw how he treated her. I only wish she’d told me of her idea beforehand. I might have talked some sense into her.”

  “So is it concern for Katie that’s gnawing at you, son, or is it your wounded pride?”

  He hadn’t thought of it that way. ’Twas likely a bit of both. He knew Katie had turned to Joseph when she first pondered the idea of selling her bread. She’d trusted Joseph with her plans and her difficulties, so why was he left out in the dark?

  “Katie is an independent sort,” Da said. “Comes from being on her own for so long. And you are the rescuing sort, always looking for ways to fix people’s troubles. I’d say most times, though, a woman doesn’t need saving; she needs someone to walk at her side while she works out her own rescue.”

  Tavish rubbed at the tension in the back of his neck. “Now you sound like Joseph. He quite smugly told me this afternoon that I’d best leave Katie to her decisions if I knew what was best for myself and my courtship.” What right did Joseph have to comment on his and Katie’s relationship?

 
“I hate to say it, Tavish, but I think Joseph may have the right of it.”

  That was not at all what he needed to hear. Tavish sat on a chair near his da’s. He forced himself to say out loud what he’d only permitted himself to think. “I believe Joseph may be courting her.”

  “There’s no ‘may be’ about it, son. There has long been a fondness in Joseph’s eyes when he speaks of her.”

  “I’ve noticed that myself.” But that hint of fondness had grown into something more of late. “I can’t like the idea of being set up to compete with Joseph Archer. He has every advantage.”

  “Is that so?” Da scratched his chin and gave him a look of deepest pondering. “Here I was thinking you had the advantage of being the first to court her, of sharing a heritage with her. And I could have sworn you had always had an easy way with women, a handsome enough face to turn heads wherever you go, and a personality one can’t help but grow fond of. And, fool that I am, I believed you were the one to whom she’d first opened her past and her heart.”

  “Then why is it, Da, I can’t shake off the worry that I might be losing her?”

  Da’s expression turned empathetic. “Likely because you lost Bridget and you know how it feels when someone you love slips away. That’s a fear that, once learned, never entirely leaves us.”

  An ache gnawed in his heart at the reminder of the tender woman Bridget Claire had been and how deeply he’d loved her. He didn’t allow himself to think of her often. Poor Bridget. She’d been so young. They both had been.

  “A sweet, sweet lass,” Da said.

  Tavish pushed out a deep sigh of regret. “Aye, that she was.”

  “I was speaking of Katie, actually. But, yes, Bridget was a dear.” Da’s expression softened. “I will say this for you, my boy. You do know how to choose well for yourself.”

  Tavish rubbed at the pulsing pain between his eyes. “How do I make certain Katie chooses me for herself?”