The Endless Forest
Page 46

Most of all: He was a Bonner, and she was Jemima’s daughter, the granddaughter of Moses Southern, whose sins against the Bonners were too many and too awful to contemplate.
Now he stood there in the window, motionless. She determined to turn away, but instead stood there, looking at him from the corner of her eye. His shirt was plain homespun, soft with washing. The right sleeve was folded up neatly to just below the elbow. His weak arm was kept close to his side by a sling made of doeskin. His hair was shorn very short, and he was clean shaven.
From Amanda Spencer, Martha had learned that calm could be won by nothing more than deep breathing. Deeply and slowly, no matter how dire the situation. Now she took three very deep breaths and turned toward the livery to complete her errands.
“Martha!”
Another very deep breath, and she pivoted. Daniel had opened the window with its new glass panes and leaned out toward her.
She called out, rather than come any closer. She said, “I was just admiring your verse.”
“Not mine.” He looked like he was going to laugh at the idea. “That’s Birdie’s composition. Simon painted it for her.”
“With Birdie’s close supervision, no doubt.”
“Exactly. Where are you off to?”
Where was she off to? For a moment she couldn’t remember.
“Ah, the livery,” she said finally. “Curiosity sent me down to bring some things to Joshua. And then I was going to see Callie.”
“You never sit still.”
She looked away. “I like to be busy.” And: “I should be on my way.”
“Scaring you off, am I?”
“No!” She sputtered. “Of course not. There’s nothing to be scared about.”
“Then come in,” Daniel said. “I’ll give you a tour.”
“Of the schoolhouse?”
“Have you seen it before?”
She had to admit she had not; she had left for Manhattan before it had been put into use.
“Then come in, have a look.”
—
Daniel’s sisters chided him for his lack of playfulness and spontaneity, and how surprised they would be to see him invite Martha Kirby into his school on a moment’s whim. Out of curiosity, he told himself. Simple goodwill toward someone who had come home after a long absence.
The truth was, he hadn’t expected her to agree. She’d fluster and make excuses or she’d hold herself very straight and decline with dignity. Or—and this thought came to him too late—she might laugh outright.
But she had accepted, after the smallest hesitation.
Daniel closed the window, listening to her run her boots over the scraper. He went out into the foyer to greet her.
“Martha. Maybe I spoke too quick—” He stopped, disconcerted by the way the color rose up from her throat and fell again. From deep red to white. As if she had been slapped.
“I only meant to say that tour is too big a word for this little school-house.”
“Oh,” she said, visibly relieved. She made a small ceremony of putting down her basket and retrieving her handkerchief from her cuff, and then hid her face in it.
He had flustered her so badly that she had lost her command of language. For some reason, that pleased him. But he was not heartless, and so he turned away to give her time to gather her thoughts.
“My mother designed it all,” he said to the wall. “The two classrooms, with the cloakroom between—”
“She was always coming up with new ways to keep mud and wet out of the classroom,” Martha said. She had regained her composure. “It seems like she found the solution. And there?” She inclined her head to a door at the other end of the hall.
“The teacher’s apartment. We’ll have to put it to rights before Mr. Moss comes in the fall or he’ll turn around and leave again.”
Daniel sounded more and more like his sisters, talking so fast that he himself was having trouble making sense of it.
“It’s all very nice,” Martha said, quite formally. She looked uncomfortable again, but then Daniel felt uncomfortable himself for no good reason. He said the next thing that occurred to him.
“Did you know you’ve got a bucket on your head?”
She blinked, and a ghost of a smile ran across her face. “You don’t like my bonnet? I bought it from the very best milliner in Manhattan.”
Daniel put his good hand on the wall and leaned into it. “You familiar with every milliner in the city?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Very well, I should have said he’s the most fashionable milliner in the city.”
“And this Mr.—”
“Henricks.”
“Everyone wants one of his buckets.”
“That’s right,” Martha said, her smile widening.
“Because his shop is fashionable.”
“Oh,” she said. “I see what you’re about. You mean to point out a logical fallacy on my part. An argumentum ad populum. But I won’t walk into that trap.”
“Argumentum ad populum?” Daniel found himself smiling too. “You took your philosophy and rhetoric studies seriously, I see.”
“Your cousin Ethan is an exacting taskmaster.”
“And you liked your studies.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “It was very unladylike of me. I should have detested philosophy and longed for a pony to go riding in the park.”