The Endless Forest
Page 37

Anje’s whole face twitched. Trying to hold back a laugh, Martha thought. Or a snicker.
“I will bring what sugar I can find.”
Voices followed her through the door and down the hall. The girls and Elizabeth, back and forth. She must see about lodgings of her own. She had been a burden on the Bonners for long enough.
Martha remembered very well what the weather could be on the edge of the endless forests, and so she had dressed carefully: wool stockings and two underskirts and her thickest boots, along with a cape lined with fox fur with matching mittens, a muff, and a scarf that itched terribly but kept out the cold like nothing else. She had to leave her good bonnet on the shelf, and took instead the one of boiled wool lined with fur.
All that, and she was still cold. She hurried along as quickly as was safe, keeping an eye on anything that might cause her to lose her footing. Before she had reached the crossroads her skirts were heavy with mud to the knee, and she was breathing loudly. It was really very odd, that she should have been cold a half hour ago and now be dripping with perspiration. But none of that was important.
She should be thinking about Callie, who waited for her at the Red Dog.
“Why the Red Dog?” she had asked Ethan before they went in to the table.
“Because I wouldn’t let her sleep in the cider house, which is the only proper building left standing on her property.”
Martha saw something in his expression that she had never seen before, distress or unhappiness of some kind. Now she wondered if there was a connection. It had never occurred to her before, but why should Ethan not take an interest in Callie?
“Why hasn’t she started rebuilding?” Martha asked.
“Because she doesn’t have the money, and she won’t mortgage the orchards, and she won’t accept gifts. At least, she won’t accept them from me or Luke or Daniel or Nathaniel either, though we’ve all offered more than once.”
Martha said, “She might accept an offer from me. I could afford to build a house for her, isn’t that so?”
His smile was a rare sight. “You could afford to build a dozen houses and it would not make a dent in your account books.”
Every year she sat down with Will Spencer and Ethan to hear the report on what they liked to call her holdings or her investments, and every year she deliberately tried not to listen. She could not conceive of such amounts of money. It only made her think of her mother, and what Jemima would do if she knew about it.
“I don’t know that Callie will accept your offer any more than she took mine,” Ethan said.
“Nor will we, unless I ask,” Martha said.
This conversation played itself over in Martha’s head as she walked carefully downhill, her skirts gathered tightly in one fist so she could watch her feet. The other way to the village—the one that went right by the Downhill House—would have been faster, but Martha was unused to muddy lanes and preferred the longer, not quite so difficult alternative.
She turned onto the Johnstown road, and then turned again in the direction of the village.
At the crossroads she let out a sigh of relief, when the worst was behind her. The main lane was heavily traveled and deeply rutted, but there was also a footpath that ran along it, hard-packed and secure. And just up ahead she could see the front door of the Red Dog and light shining from the windows.
This wasn’t so very bad, she told herself, and with that thought the earth beneath her left foot disappeared and her leg plunged up to the thigh in cold mud.
Even as it was happening the thought came to her: How had she forgotten about Big Muck, well known to every person with two good feet within fifty miles?
She scrambled backward and tugged, but Big Muck wasn’t having any. Her leg slipped down another notch, and her skirts began to follow. Martha yanked again, and this time Big Muck let go with a sound like a drawn-out and very wet kiss.
She found herself on her back, looking into the stormy sky. Lying prone on the lane while rain plopped into the mud and onto her face, Martha hiccupped a laugh. She raised a hand to her nose and recalled too late the sorry condition of her gloves.
This time the laughter came in fits and starts between bouts of spitting out mud and struggling to sit up. When she finally managed that small task she sat leaning back on her hands as though she was on a picnic in a meadow. Her skirts and mantle were caked with muck and dripping water. The muff was lost, probably never to be found. And down at the end of her left leg, five muddy toes.
Big Muck had sucked the boot off her foot and taken the stocking for good measure. She wiggled her muddy toes and lay down again on the lane, and now the laugh came up from deep in her belly and she was helpless to do anything more than hold her sides.
“Got you but good,” a voice said over her.
Daniel Bonner. She closed her eyes, but there was no ignoring the fact that of all people, Daniel Bonner had come across her like this.
“Can’t remember last time somebody walked right into Big Muck. Maybe you’re the first,” his disembodied voice went on amiably.
“A dubious honor,” Martha muttered. There was still mud on her mouth, caked in the corners. And on top of all that, the rain was picking up its tempo.
“I came over to lend you a hand, but you look happy just where you are.”
That brought Martha up. “You were watching me?”
His broad-rimmed hat kept rain off his neck, but it also left his face in shadow and hid his expression. Martha suspected that he was smiling.
He said, “We had this very conversation just yesterday as I recall.”