by Sara Donati
“Well, then,” Elizabeth said, turning to Bears. “What took you so very long? We were concerned.”
“Your aunt Merriweather,” said Bears. “She ain’t exactly a fast traveler.”
“Who?” asked Liam, looking up from his work.
“Aunt Merriweather!” answered Hannah for Elizabeth, unable to hide her excitement. “From England, and cousin Amanda—”
“And the husband, too. Spencer.” He had found a basket of corncake, and he paused to swallow. “But Mrs. Schuyler talked them into leaving the servants behind in Albany.”
“At least there’s that,” Elizabeth said. Nathaniel’s keen eyes were on her. There was a wondering there, questions unasked.
“Bears told them about Julian,” he said. “And Kitty, and the rest of it.”
Elizabeth pushed out a large sigh of relief. “Where are they?”
“At the judge’s.”
“Well, then, let’s go!” Hannah said, in a businesslike way. “She’ll want to see you right away.”
“Certainly not,” said Elizabeth firmly. “They’ve traveled all day, and she’ll want her tea and her bed. Tomorrow is soon enough. Now if you’ll pardon me—” Without another look at Nathaniel, she picked up her shawl and left them.
Bears found her an hour later, where she sat on a beech stump that overlooked the waterfall and the cabins. It had become a favorite place for her since she moved to Lake in the Clouds; the rushing of the water was soothing, and everything she held dear in the world was within view. Soon there would be snow and this spot would be lost to her until spring. Falling-Day was predicting a hard winter from the way the corn husks had grown in a tight swirl, and the thickness of the muskrat shelters. Elizabeth pulled her shawl more closely around her shoulders against the chill.
She knew that she should go down and cook, too, but she also knew that no one would mind if she did not; Falling-Day would have enough red corn soup for all of them. Nathaniel was in the barn, skinning a deer. She caught sight of him, now and then, looking in her direction. They all knew where she was; they were all content to leave her this time on her own. All except Runs-from-Bears.
She watched him coming in her direction, and tried to set her face in a welcoming smile. He hunkered down, his hands draped casually over his knees, and watched with her.
“Things are simpler in the bush,” Elizabeth said after a while. When he had nothing to add to this observation, she picked up a stick from the ground and began to break pieces off it, until she could put off the question no longer.
“Sennonhtonnon’?” What are you thinking?
Runs-from-Bears said: “You are one of the bravest women I have ever known. But you sit here shivering in fear of akokstenha.”
Elizabeth flung the stick at him and it caught in his hair. “I hope you did not call her an old woman to her face. And you should understand,” she said. “You just spent three days in her company.” Then her voice caught, hoarse with tears, and she pressed her hands to her eyes. “How will I explain? How can I ever explain?”
Bears pulled the stick from his hair, and dropped it. “She does not hold you responsible for what happened to Julian. He made his own way.”
Her head jerked up, and she saw his expression: firm, and without pity.
“She has a younger brother, too, and he has been a disappointment to her. Maybe she knows more of what is in your heart than you imagine.”
Surprised out of her anxiety, Elizabeth examined his expression closely. “My aunt has been very frank with you. She must have wanted some information.”
Bears produced a grin. “Quid pro quo.”
“I cannot imagine what news she might have of interest to you, Bears.”
He said, “Your aunt has had an adventure or two of her own. They came to New-York by way of Montreal. Where she made the acquaintance of Richard Todd.”
Elizabeth heard what he had said; she heard him repeat it. But she still could not quite credit what he told her. Richard Todd was in Montreal; her aunt Merriweather had had opportunity to meet and talk with him. There was a hollow feeling in Elizabeth’s stomach when she thought of the lies that Richard had probably told, made only slightly less by the knowledge that aunt Merriweather had spent the days after Montreal with the Schuylers; from them she would have heard something more of the truth. It was almost funny: she had first dreaded having to make her visitors acquainted with all that had happened here in Paradise in the past few weeks, and now her aunt seemed to be in possession of that information, and more. More than Elizabeth herself knew, or wanted anyone to know.
“She asks more questions than you do, Looks-Hard.”
Suddenly resigned, Elizabeth wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and squared her shoulders. “Perhaps it would be best to see her this evening, after all.”
Bears rose, and offered her a hand up. “Tkayeri,” he said. It is proper so.
Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Hannah arrived at the judge’s door just after dark, to find the house in great turmoil. Instead of the normal lamplight, beeswax candles blazed in all the downstairs rooms. The hall was crowded with luggage and boxes which Manny was busily sorting away, but there was no sign of the visitors or of the judge. Polly appeared with her arms full of bedding in the doorway of the study. It seemed that they were in the process of moving Kitty and her son into the house, and the study was to be converted into a nursery. Nathaniel saw by the look on Elizabeth’s face that she was not at all surprised at this. In fact, she was barely able to suppress a smile.
“It looks like aunt Merriweather’s planning on moving in herself,” Nathaniel noted, stepping over a tea chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
“Oh no,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps there is luggage here for a week, certainly not more than two. She did not bring a cat with her?” This last question was directed to Polly, who confirmed that there was no cat in the traveling party. Elizabeth nodded, satisfied. “Without Aphrodite she will not stay for more than a week or ten days.”
“Should we go help?” asked Hannah, trying hard to curb her curiosity about a large trunk marked “Library.”
“Absolutely not,” Elizabeth said. “She’ll have everyone jumping as it is. We’ll sit here, and wait.”
Nathaniel moved a stack of hatboxes and she made a place for herself near the hearth. Hannah managed to find the bookshelf and settled down in a corner. Nathaniel took Elizabeth’s hand, icy cold, and rubbed it between his own. There was a jumpiness in her that was foreign to him, but he had observed that even a woman as unflappable as Falling-Day could be brought out of her calm when she believed her mother or an older aunt to be close by.
The wagon pulled up, and in almost no time at all, Aunt Merriweather appeared at the door. Nathaniel saw straight off that she was the kind of woman who made the wind move with her. She was tall, with a back as straight as a sword and a set to her shoulders that would have suited a general. In her arms was a bundle which Nathaniel supposed held Kitty’s child. She handed it over to Curiosity without hesitation, and then crossed the room in a great crackle of skirts and capes, all in black. “Elizabeth, my dear,” she said, holding out her hands. “Come and kiss me. I suppose this is your husband? I am so very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bonner. Such good reports I have had of you, I wonder if they could all possibly be true? And your Hannah. Come closer, child, and let me look at you. Your uncle Runs-from-Bears told me all about you—somewhere in my things I have something which might interest you. Curiosity, would tea be too much? You must tell me if I am being too demanding—I am only a visitor, and I have no wish to disrupt your household. Sit here, Elizabeth, where I can examine you. Whatever are you wearing on your feet? Could we find paper and ink, do you imagine? I need your assistance at once, we must construct a list. I find your father—most excellent man, but a man after all—ill prepared to take on the task of raising his grandson. We must find the good even in the saddest of fates, must we not, Elizabeth? Have you seen your nephew today? I arri
ve to find that he has already been christened Ethan, imagine. The image of your poor brother, I would say. Kitty, you should not be out of bed, but I suppose you might come and sit with us for a few moments. This is your affair, after all.”
Elizabeth was immediately caught up in a discussion of Kitty’s change in circumstance. She threw Nathaniel a weak smile; he shrugged one shoulder and turned to the window. The judge was headed up the stairs with Mr. Witherspoon close behind. Galileo and Benjamin were unloading the wagon.
A couple was walking up the hill toward the house. The woman was small and finely built, pretty but pale in her mourning clothes. Her hands fluttered as she spoke. There was something whispery about Elizabeth’s cousin Amanda, even at this distance.
There was not much more to see about William Spencer, whose attention and mind were not with whatever tale his wife had to tell. He was of medium height, with the shoulders of a man who sat over books all day. He stood looking down over the lake and the village, his expression easy and even and empty, somehow. His wife stood at his side, talking on, her hands moving in the air in front of her as if she could call his attention to her with magic. Nathaniel wondered if cousin Amanda had brought the Green Man with her all the way from England, and if he would feel at home with the stone men of the endless forests.
Elizabeth found that aunt Merriweather was best approached like an unavoidable march through a boggy field. Once in the middle and up to the ankles in muck, there was nothing to do but persevere for the other side.
When there was opportunity, she answered questions in the order they seemed to her most important. To answer them all would not be possible; Aunt would come back to those which most interested her, anyway. One such question had already surfaced in three slightly different forms. Nathaniel would have been a help in this conversation, but he had excused himself to lend Galileo a hand.
“If we do rebuild the schoolhouse, it will not be until the spring. There is too much work at this time of year to think of it, in any case.”
Her aunt said: “But I am more than willing to finance the rebuilding—”
“I understand, and I am most thankful for your generosity. It is not the funds for rebuilding which are at issue, but simply the time. This winter we will make do with Father’s first homestead. It served us well before, and will serve again, will it not, Hannah?”
Hannah’s instincts were very good; she simply nodded, and resisted the pull into the conversation.
“Cannot you hire one of the men in the village, or several of them, to take on this job?” asked her aunt.
Kitty surprised Elizabeth by speaking up. “The hunting season is upon us, ma’am,” she said. “And many of the men here go into the bush to trap.”
“I see,” aunt Merriweather said. Which meant, of course, that she did not; she was not resigned. Elizabeth anticipated other conversations on this topic, but for the moment she was rescued by the arrival of her cousin Amanda, who dropped down beside her in a great rush of silk and taffeta, and took both her hands in her own pale, cold ones.
“We have been a very long time in finding you,” Amanda said in her breathy, sweet way. “I did wonder if perhaps we should never get here at all.”
“But here you are,” her mother noted. “And here is your tea. I do not like your color, Amanda. Do drink it while it is warm.”
Hidden from her mother’s view by Kitty, Amanda rolled her eyes at Elizabeth, even as she took the cup that Daisy offered her.
“You are looking very well,” Elizabeth said, squeezing Amanda’s hand. “And I am so pleased to see you here. I only wish circumstances were happier—”
The judge had been sitting quietly nearby, listening with a smile on his face. But he stood and left the room quite suddenly, mumbling some small excuse. Mr. Witherspoon trailed out after him, casting apologies liberally as he went. Aunt watched them go with a closed expression and her mouth drawn down in worry.
“I fear we do not have much to offer in the way of diversion, given recent losses,” Elizabeth concluded.
“Oh, but there is the child,” Amanda said. “We must be thankful for the child.”
Curiosity appeared at the door as if she had been summoned. The bundle in her arms was squirming and humming in anticipation. “Kitty, this boy of yours is empty again.”
Kitty rose. “I must go and see after him,” she said. “If you will excuse me.”
Amanda jumped up, Elizabeth forgotten, to follow Kitty on her errand.
“My poor dear,” aunt Merriweather said under her breath. “My poor lamb, so long without a child of her own. She holds up so bravely, does she not? Although we were most surprised, pleasantly surprised, by the good tidings we had of you, my dear. I must say at least your sense of decorum and timing is better than was that of your poor brother—not that such a thing as reputation seems to matter here. Ah, William.”
Will Spencer was at the door. He bowed from the waist, and came forward.
It was almost two years since Elizabeth had last seen him: the hair on his temples had grown sparser, and there were the first fine lines around his eyes. But the same kindness and intelligence were there, too, and when she looked at him she did not see a man of great wealth and education, but the boy she had grown up with. She smiled at him, and at herself: all her worries, and here was just Will, who had hid with her in the apple orchard, taught her how to make a slingshot out of old garters, and told her stories of the Amazon. Whatever else she had once felt for him seemed all very dim and unimportant, compared to what she felt for the boy he had been and the place that boy held in her heart. Perhaps he could see all this on her face, as well, for his strained expression was replaced by a genuine smile, and he leaned over to take her hand and kiss her cheek. He smelled, as always, of his pipe.
“Will.”
“It’s good to see you, Lizzie,” he said. “I’ve been very worried about you.”
Aunt Merriweather put down her teacup. “So were we all. But look at the color in her cheeks. The wilderness agrees with her, after all. Is that not so, Mr. Bonner?”
Elizabeth was startled to find that Nathaniel had come in. His face was set in an expression she could not quite interpret.
“I’m called Nathaniel. And yes, it’s true enough.”
Growing up under her aunt’s tutelage, Elizabeth had often seen the calculating look she was giving Nathaniel now: she had not yet determined his worthiness, and she would not be rushed in her appraisal or less than frank about the results of her examination. What Elizabeth had not often experienced was the kind of measured calm with which Nathaniel met this scrutiny. The truth was, Elizabeth realized, that Nathaniel would not be devastated or even especially put out if her aunt should take a dislike to him. It was this potential indifference which was so unusual. Augusta Merriweather had enough money and influence to gain the attention of almost anyone who crossed her path. Thus Nathaniel was a new experience for her and, Elizabeth saw with some relief, not a displeasing one.
“Well, then, Nathaniel. Come here and be introduced to Sir William Spencer, Viscount Durbeyfield. He is also my son-in-law, and your wife’s first love.”
Elizabeth’s spoon went clattering to the floor.
“Mother!” Amanda’s tone was all gentle sorrow and dismay.
“Now, Mother Merriweather,” said William with a great frown.
“Do stop ‘Mothering’ me,” the old lady said irritably, peering at her son-in-law down the elegant arch of her long nose. “Do you think you could hide anything from this man? Look at him.” She pursed her mouth. “You might as well come out and tell him all of it.”
Elizabeth met her husband’s cool and somewhat amused gaze.
“I’m listening, Boots.”
“We were together quite a lot as children,” Elizabeth said, struggling very hard to keep her composure and her temper both. “It was very long ago.”
“How long?” asked Hannah, who had surfaced from her corner and her book with an unerring aff
inity for high adventure.
“A million years,” Elizabeth said firmly.
William held out a hand toward Nathaniel. “You’ll permit me to present myself to you, in spite of this rather peculiar start we’ve made. Will Spencer, at your service. Mother does like to stir things up”—Aunt Merriweather’s cluck of the tongue drew a smile from him—“so you mustn’t be alarmed at her stories.”
“I ain’t so easily vexed,” Nathaniel said, taking the hand that was offered to him. “Elizabeth can tell you that much about me.”
Aunt Merriweather rose with a sudden flurry of skirts and lace. “I do hope that she will have a great deal more to tell than that. Elizabeth, love, come with me to my room. We have much to discuss, and we can leave the men to their own devices. They will sort things out as they see fit. Hannah can amuse herself? I see she has much in common with you at her age, Elizabeth—if you were not up a tree, you were lost in a book.”
When the door had been firmly closed behind them, the old woman settled herself in the chair by the window. Ever vigilant, Augusta Merriweather did not like surprises or unexpected visitors, no matter how far she might be from home.
“Well, Lizzie,” the older woman said, when Elizabeth had taken a seat at her knee. It was her other voice, the kinder one she reserved for moments of solitude. All the lines in her face seemed to soften at once. “This is a sad business, is it not?”
Elizabeth nodded, because she was not sure of her ability to keep her composure. She watched her aunt’s profile for a moment, remembering small things which had been lost to her in the time they had been apart: the strong lines of her face, stronger now it seemed. She had grown older.
“Sometime I would like to hear the whole story of what went amiss with Julian, for your father is not capable of telling it. But I think not now. I find I am not in the right frame of mind for tears.”
“You never are, Aunt.”
“Have you never seen me thus?” She looked a bit surprised. “Well, I shall not start this evening, then. There are other matters more urgent, at the moment. Your new sister-in-law, first and foremost. Tell me, do you think there’s any chance of our taking her and the child back to England with us? Or just the child—Amanda and Will would provide an excellent home. You know this to be true.”
