Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 5

In spite of the seriousness of their situation, Nathaniel grinned. He caught the plait that fell over her shoulder to her waist and gave it a good tug. "You're the one with the talent for breaking men out of gaol."
She flicked her fingers at him, but color rose on her cheeks. "Do you have any idea how we could possibly get Hawkeye out of a military garrison?"
"I'm sure something would come up," he said. "There's money enough, and money opens more locks than keys ever will. But I'm not about to leave you here alone with two new babies."
"Of course you must go. Moncrieff and Robbie cannot do it without you. Your father needs you."
"Boots," Nathaniel said wearily. "My ma always told me never to cross a woman in childbed, but--"
"A wise woman," interrupted Elizabeth. "Most excellent advice."
Deep in the night, Nathaniel brought first the girl child and then the boy to her for nursing as she could not yet manage them both at once. Curiosity had come to the door at the first hungry cries, but seeing that Nathaniel was attending to Elizabeth's needs, she nodded and slipped back to the bed she was sharing with Hannah in the sleeping loft.
Yawning widely, Elizabeth sat up against the bolsters and watched her son's small face. He tugged so enthusiastically that she had to bite back a small cry. Nathaniel sat beside her, his gaze fixed on the boy. Mathilde was on his lap, newly wound and already asleep.
Elizabeth said, "I wish that you did not have to go, Nathaniel. But I cannot be so selfish. You will never rest easy here, knowing that your father needs your help. Someday you may call Daniel to you the same way, and I expect that he will do what he must to come. I trust that he will."
The candlelight lay like gold on the baby's cheek. Nathaniel touched the tender skin with one finger. "You need me, too," he said hoarsely. "It ain't right to leave you, Boots."
"You will come back to me, will you not? To us?"
"Aye," he said, his breath warm on her skin. "Never doubt it."
News traveled fast in Paradise. The next morning Judge Middleton stood at the foot of his daughter's bed and demanded the whole story while he kneaded his tricorn between his hands; he reminded her of nothing so much as one of her students with a guilty conscience. Looking at him now, she could not help marking the likeness to her brother. Julian had had the same high coloring and handsome features, and the same propensity for self-indulgence.
The judge cleared his throat repeatedly. "I am sorry to hear of Hawkeye's troubles, but I can see no reason for you to be alone on this mountain in the middle of winter. Come home with me. There's room for all of you." But he could not quite meet Elizabeth's eye.
She concentrated on the child in her lap, and at length her silence forced him to the heart of the matter.
"Curiosity can look after you there as well as here," he said gruffly. "Better."
The simple truth was, the judge feared that Nathaniel's journey would cost him his housekeeper. Elizabeth was disappointed, but she knew that to argue this with her father would not be worth the effort. She said, "I will not leave Lake in the Clouds, but I will talk to Curiosity."
Greatly relieved to have this conversation over, the judge spent a few minutes admiring his grandchildren.
"I think both of them will have your mother's coloring." Carefully the judge picked up Mathilde and examined her face. "She has your mother's chin, too, but then, so do you. You do resemble your mother so, Elizabeth." He narrowed his eyes at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time. "Both of you so independent. It is your curse, and your blessing. I fear this little girl will carry on in the same vein."
"I hope that she will," Elizabeth said, somewhat taken aback by this uncharacteristic thoughtful turn in her father.
He passed the baby over. "Life might be easier, if you would allow it."
"Life would have been easier for you, too, if you had stayed in Norfolk."
He smiled at that, and suddenly they were easier together than they had been in some time. Then Curiosity's voice came to them from the other room, and the judge grew flustered. In no time at all, he had rushed out with the excuse of a meeting in the village.
"That man," Curiosity muttered when Elizabeth recounted her conversation with the judge. "Botherin' a woman in childbed with his little man-pains. It's a good thirty years me and my Galileo been free, and I ain't about to start jumpin' when he snap his fingers. Ain't my girls as good at housekeepin' as me?"
Elizabeth agreed that they were.
"Polly right there with nothing to do but feed the man, and Daisy not far off, either. I'll tell you plain: he can just eat their cooking a while longer. Askin' me to walk away from his only daughter new delivered 'cause he bored. No wonder he run off before I could have a word with him."
Elizabeth buried her smile in Mathilde's fragrant neck, but Curiosity's fury was not yet spent. She had brought in a bucket of hot water for the hip bath, and she tapped an impatient melody on the tin as she muttered to herself. Then her head snapped up and she grinned at Elizabeth. "We'll send Martha up to the house to look after him. That'll do the trick."
Martha Southern was a widow with three young children, and Curiosity had recently had the idea that the judge watched her with an oversolicitous eye.
"You make me laugh, Curiosity. You will find an opportunity to matchmake even in this."