“So what’s your solution, then? Either you do something, or you don’t.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
He picked up a pencil and one of his uncle’s old newspapers, and in large strokes, drew a square. In it he wrote Problem. Under it he added two slanting lines, labeled Do something and Do nothing.
“But do what?” she asked impatiently. Sometimes he was so analytical that he couldn’t see that reality and logic were often on two different planes entirely.
“You go to the police. You tell them what you know, and justice will take its due course.” He spoke plainly and flatly, as if he were explaining it to a child.
“You’re a man, Silas, a man with some status. You’re respected for your gender and your career at the very least. I’m a woman, a seamstress, and as if that weren’t bad enough, he rejected me. I’m the cast-off woman, so whatever I say will be dismissed as my attempt at retribution.”
“Really, Eliza. You’ve certainly got this thought through.” His voice was cold.
“Don’t you understand that you could tell the police what happened, and you’d be believed? I doubt that I would. Think about it, Silas. Think about it!”
“You want me to testify for you?”
Oh, he was so maddening. “No, I don’t.”
The teakettle whistled, and he took it off the flame and poured the water over the tea in the strainer. “Eliza, it really is as simple as I’ve shown you. Now you have to decide which of these”—he moved the teacup aside and ran his finger over the diagram—“you will do.”
There was no point in going further with him. Any discussion simply cemented his concept of her as being a willing participant in the sordid situation.
“You’re right,” she said. She picked the cup from the table and swirled the steaming tea in it, anything to keep him from seeing how badly her hands were shaking. She couldn’t bear to look at him. If he saw the hot anger in her eyes, he’d once again misinterpret it.
All she’d wanted was support from him. That’s what friends did. Was it too much to ask of him? Apparently so. She’d failed whatever test of logic and reasoning he’d set up, and that failure was enough for him to sever their friendship.
What he hadn’t bargained for, though, was that by his very actions, he failed her test—her test of friendship, of caring, of love.
She gulped the tea, ignoring the burning path it seared in her mouth and throat. This was the least of her concerns.
“I’m ready to leave now.”
As she began to step out of the kitchen, he put a restraining hand on her arm. “Wait. I don’t think we’ve finished here.”
“Oh, we’ve finished. I have nothing more to say. Now I will go to do what I know how to do—sew. I am going to stitch down seams and make buttonholes in five shirts and hem a dress. I will do it well, and I will do it now, because I am leaving.”
“I don’t mean to—” He held out his hand as if to stop her.
“I don’t care. Maybe I will care tonight and maybe I will tomorrow, but right now I don’t. You let me down. I wanted you to be there for me, to listen, to help me see my way through this mess, but you don’t want to hear anything except your simplistic little diagram.” She strode back into the room and seized it from the table and shook it in front of him. “Two lines. That’s all. Two lines. Do you really think life is made that way? Two lines? Two completely straight lines?”
She could hear herself. She was out of control, raging at him. He stared at her, his astonishment so clear it might as well have been written on his face.
She couldn’t stop. “The crux of the matter here is that I needed you, and you not only refused to support me, you turned away. Even if you think I am the worst sinner in the world, even if my soul is stained so badly that it reeks of transgression, who are you to dismiss me?” Tears crowded into her eyes. “I thought we were friends. I thought we were—”
In one step, he had her in his arms, his lips buried in her hair, half-kissing, half-murmuring reassurances. She leaned against him, knowing that the tears, which were now flowing freely, were soaking into his shirt. He smelled of clean cotton, a bit of wood smoke, and shaving cream. He smelled of strength.
Their words tumbled over each other’s until they could no longer tell which one was speaking.
“I’m sorry. . .always. . .forever. . .love you.”
She’d needed this. Tenderness wasn’t Blaine Loring’s style, to say the least.
But being held by Silas was comforting, and his energy flowed into her.
How long had it been since she’d felt this safe, this protected? She didn’t want to move. If she could stay right where she was, enclosed in Silas’s embrace, the world could spin on in its crazy course, and it wouldn’t touch her.
A chorus of less-than-subtle coughs from the doorway told her they weren’t alone. She and Silas sprang apart quickly.
“Now there are a couple of guilty looking mugs,” Edward said, grinning.
“Guilty? I’d say happy.” Hyacinth beamed at them both.
Eliza glanced at Silas. His face was bright red. “We need to get to the Robbins house,” he said almost gruffly, without even a glance at Eliza.
The feeling of well-being evaporated. The moment of tenderness was short-lived, and he was back to being distant.
“We’re going to have to have a talk, you and I,” Edward said, putting his arm around his nephew as they headed for the door. “You’re missing something here, something pretty important.”
Hyacinth hung back and let the men leave the room. Then she looped her arm through Eliza’s. “Men,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Some of them are like horses.”
“Horses?” Eliza stared at her friend. “What are you talking about?”
“You have to train a horse,” Hyacinth said, “and you have to train a man, too. My Matthew was just like Silas at the beginning. He had an incredible mind for the business of running the farm. He knew where every penny went. Nothing escaped him. Nothing except how to love.”
“But shouldn’t it come naturally?”
“Honey, Matthew loved me. I never had a moment’s doubt about that, but he wasn’t good at all with understanding that love is like a busy city street. Traffic goes both ways. To him, and from him. To me, and from me. Once he learned that I needed love from him, and I don’t just mean kissing and hugging—I mean the special look over a shared memory, or a wildflower picked because he knew I’d like it, or making a cup of tea for me without my having to ask for it—then our marriage became extraordinary.”
“I can’t train Silas. The fact is, he isn’t a horse. What do I do, tempt him with a handful of oats?”
Hyacinth laughed. “Now that I’d like to see. Eliza, you’re misunderstanding me. Silas’s heart isn’t prepared for love. I think he’s been completely blindsided by you. His heart will have to soften to let you into it. Right now he’s resisting loving you. It couldn’t be more obvious if he plastered a sign on the door of the mercantile. When I say you need to train him, I mean you need to help him open his heart so that the two of you can have the greatest love possible.”
Eliza put her hands over her ears. “Stop! I can’t change Silas. You know what he’s like. You might as well be telling me to flap my arms and fly to the moon.”
“I know it seems that way, but you can do it.”
Eliza shook her head. “I don’t want to. You’re presuming I want Silas to love me. Well, I don’t. I don’t love him, and he doesn’t love me.”
“Eliza, that’s not true.”
She couldn’t tell anymore. Her heart had been so battered with Blaine Loring that she thought it might never recover. Just minutes ago, Silas had held her tightly and said something about love—and then promptly rejected her again.
Hyacinth sighed. “Young love. It’s never easy.”
“It’s not love. Haven’t you watched him around me? He doesn’t love me.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, I’ve watched both of you, and he does love you. He’s sneaky about it, and he doesn’t let you see it, and he’s fighting it with everything he’s got and whatever else he can borrow, but he’s smitten.”
Eliza shook her head. “You’re seeing what you want to see. You’re in love with Edward, and you want Silas and me to be in love.”
“I do like a good love story,” Hyacinth said, “and I’m a sap for a happy ending.”
A good love story and a happy ending. Both seemed impossible.
“We’d better get going,” Eliza said. “Buttonholes await.”
❧
There was no need to think about anything at the Robbins house, Silas thought. To tell the truth, there was no way to think, not with the chaos of six children eddying around him. Today they seemed especially rambunctious.
He’d put his hammer down to pick up the try square. The top of the cupboard seemed a bit off, and he wanted to make sure it was straight. He’d put the try square out of the reach of the children, who found the metal and rosewood tool to be fascinating. When he returned the try square to the toolbox and reached again for the hammer, it was gone, taken by a curious boy who was pounding a large nail into the middle of the board that was to be the center of the cupboard door.
Only by the grace of God had he not lost his temper. The board had been rendered unusable by the nail protruding from it, and he’d dug through the other pieces of wood to see if something else would work, and of course, he hadn’t found a thing.
Now he rocked back on his heels, studying the partially assembled door and trying to figure out how to redeem the thing. He’d had the whole thing planned out, with every detail laid out so that no wood was wasted. Now not only was an expensive piece of wood wasted, but he’d have to buy more, and it wouldn’t match. . . .
This was frustrating.
He was trying to help, but there were so many impediments. No wonder Jack hadn’t been able to keep up with the household repairs. Who could?
A small arm snaked around his shoulders, and a sticky mouth pressed against his cheek. “It’s a pretty door,” little Mark said, his two-year-old body leaning against Silas’s. “When I grow up, I want to be a wood-pounder like you.”
His anger evaporated. A wood-pounder!
“You’ll be a great wood-pounder,” he said, hugging the boy back.
“Do you like my shirt?” Mark asked, puffing his chest out as much as he could. “Miss Davis just finished it, and she said I look very handsome indeed.”
Silas glanced up, but Eliza was bent over another shirt, her bottom lip caught in her teeth as she worked. The sunlight caught a light reddish tinge of her hair, making it almost bronze. A single lock of hair had escaped the coiled bun at the back of her neck, and she pushed it out of the way, only to have it fall right back down again.
“Miss Davis knows fashion,” Silas said, “so if she said you’re very handsome in the shirt, then, my man, you are.”
“I’m going to show my mother,” the boy said, and with one last admiring look at the cupboard door, he darted off.
The boy certainly was a charmer, and he was obviously delighted with his new shirt. Silas peeked at Eliza again. She was sewing a button on a shirt that was a larger copy of Mark’s. What a blessing she had been to this family.
He wasn’t going to think about her now. He couldn’t. For one thing, he needed to solve the puzzle of the wood.
Silas studied the wood laid out before him, trying to see if there was any solution to the problem. But he had planned precisely, and losing the big piece in the middle meant that it couldn’t be done.
“Silas!” His uncle’s voice boomed across the room.
“Uncle Edward?” He stood up, wincing as he realized his foot had gone to sleep. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got cabin fever. In case you hadn’t noticed, my boy, this has been a long winter. My foot is almost healed, and I felt like a walk. So I thought I’d come over and see if I could help.”
“Hyacinth is with Mrs. Robbins. Little Mark just ran in to show her his new shirt that Eliza made.”
Uncle Edward picked his way carefully over to Silas’s side. “You’ve got a lot of projects going on at once. Not being critical here, just commenting. . .”
“It’s true.” Silas moved the stack of wood aside to make a path for his uncle. “I’m doing the cupboard now. It’ll go right over here by the window.”
“You trued it, didn’t you?” Uncle Edward looked at the partially assembled piece. “It looks perfectly square.”
“I put the try square on it again just a bit ago. I wanted to make sure it was perfect before I went any further.”
“Excellent.”
Uncle Edward’s words meant much to Silas. He took great pride in his carpentry, and in the past months he’d taught Silas to do the same, even if it meant taking longer in the preparation.
“I do have a problem.” Silas held up the board with the nail sticking out of it.
His uncle laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen woodworking quite like that. Whatever possessed you to do that?”
“I can’t take credit for it. I suspect one of the younger carpenters—or wood-pounders, as Mark calls us—is responsible. Here’s the situation: I have exactly enough wood, and my plan was—”
He explained it to his uncle, and when he had finished, he watched his uncle mentally analyze the dilemma.
“Hand me a pencil and paper,” Uncle Edward said at last. “How about if you do this, and this, and this. You can lay the wood in at an angle. It’s going to be more work, and you’ll have to make sure you get the angle exactly the same on each piece, but you can do it if you use the miter square.” He picked up the tool, like the try square but with the rosewood piece set at a slant. “It’ll actually be very intriguing if you do it this way.”
Uncle Edward was right. It was even more striking when the wood was placed in the door in an angular pattern. Still, he looked at his own plans, with the long slabs of wood placed in strict vertical lines, and he hated to let them go. But he had no choice.
He thanked his uncle, who stayed and watched and advised for a while before touring the rest of the house with Jack Robbins. Silas worked carefully and efficiently, and by the end of the afternoon, when night had stolen the daylight from the room, he lifted the finished piece into place.
“I like the design,” Eliza said, as she came over to examine the new cupboard. “I know you had to change it, but it worked out.”
“It did, didn’t it?”
“Edward and Hyacinth have already left. I hope you don’t mind walking with me.” Was it his imagination, or did she stumble over the sentence?
“I don’t mind.” He hated the way the words came out, stiff and unwieldy.
They left the Robbins house and made their way without speaking to the boardinghouse. The silence was so heavy it was choking. He made an attempt at small talk. “When do you plan to move into the house?”
“Mrs. Adams hopes to leave in a week, so we will probably go in three or four days, depending on when her children arrive. Her daughter and her husband and her son will all be here to help her. They’ll move the furniture we’re taking into the house.”
“And the cat?”
“Tiger is spending her days in the house, catching whatever mice might be bold enough to come in, although the Robbins children really like it when she comes with me. They must tucker her out pretty good. Whenever I go to leave, she’s in with Mary, sound asleep.”
He laughed. “Six children wear me out!”
“If she spends the day at Birdbath House, we go over at night and bring her to the boardinghouse. Mrs. Adams was fine with that, which surprised me. She told us initially that we couldn’t have animals in the house. I believe her exact words were, ‘No animals, not a cat, not a dog, not a chicken.’ ”
“A chicken?”
“I didn’t ask. Well, maybe she’s just ready to leave and that’s why she
lets Tiger stay.”
“Maybe. Would you like to get the cat now? It’ll save you an extra trip this evening.” And it’ll give me more time with you, he added mentally. Maybe he’d find a way to talk to her without sounding as if he’d been dipped in wax.
“If you don’t mind, that would be wonderful.”
Birdbath House was deeply shadowed, but the little cat was easy to find. She was waiting at the door for them and mewed when she saw Eliza. Eliza swept the kitten up and tucked her into her scarf. “I think she’s hungry. Mrs. Adams saves her scraps of meat, and Tiger has become quite a fan of her cooking. I’d always heard that a cat won’t mouse if it’s fed, but apparently that’s not true. Mrs. Adams told me that, and of course she’s right.”
He reached for the doorknob as she turned, and they met, their faces only inches apart. Automatically he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, and for a moment, he couldn’t move.
His silly chart that he had drawn out earlier reappeared in his mind, only this time in the box was written: Kiss Her? and from the bottom of it came two lines. One said Yes, and one said No.
His words came back to haunt him. It was simple, he had said. One path or the other.
Her eyes were deep blue in the faint light of the dying moon, and her lips were open just a bit.
He could kiss her. He wanted to, so very badly. But was it the right thing to do?
The image of that inane diagram flashed in front of him again. Yes? No? He chose, and he leaned forward, and she leaned forward, until their lips were almost touching. Suddenly with a flash of fur and tiny sharp claws, the cat squeezed free from between them, hissed angrily at him, and shot onto Eliza’s shoulder.
“Who knew our chaperone would be so small?” she said, laughing somewhat shakily.
“And so effective.” He touched her chin where Tiger had dug her claws in while making her getaway. “I think you’re bleeding.”
“Oh, great. Well, Silas, I do believe this is our cue to leave.” She stepped back and peeled the cat from her shoulder and tucked her again into her scarf. “I need to get to the boardinghouse before Tiger here decides to eat my ear off or something.”
Remembrance Page 11
