Authors: Eleanor Kuhns
“He’s helping Mother prove Richard’s innocence,” Grace said quickly. “I’ll catch Ben.”
“Your mother will be angry with you,” Kate said, casting Rees a frightened glance from under her lashes.
“Oh pooh, I don’t care.”
Rees watched her take off in a sprint after her brother. Even her gait: the outthrust shoulders and rocking motion of the hips were her father’s. Then he turned his attention to the nursemaid. She rose slowly to her feet and he instantly understood Caldwell’s sneering laughter. Kate was pregnant, at least four months gone, maybe five, if he correctly judged the size of the bulge beneath her apron.
“Please sit down,” Rees said, lowering himself to the grass so he did not tower over her. She hesitated and then slowly dropped to the grass beside him. Rees regarded her silently. A pretty girl with soft round cheeks and blue eyes, her face was swollen and flushed with crying.
“What do you want?” she asked, turning frightened eyes upon him.
“Richard is suspected of murdering his father,” he said. “I’m sure you know that.” He waited courteously for her nod.
She looked at him impatiently. “Of course,” she said.
“You’re close to Richard?” Rees asked, his eyes dropping involuntarily to her swelling belly.
“No,” she choked out. “No, we aren’t close.” Tears filled her eyes and she quickly wiped them away with a corner of her apron. Rees waited. “I haven’t seen him for weeks.”
“But you both live here,” he said gesturing to the farm around him.
“He stopped speaking to me after I told him about the baby.”
“Who else knows about the baby?”
“Only Grace.” She raised tear-filled eyes. “Oh, and I am so scared to tell Mrs. Bowditch.”
Rees nodded. He suspected Mrs. Bowditch would be neither kind nor understanding. “Is there anyone who will take you in?” he asked.
She shook her head, sniffling. “My father is dead and my mother has enough to do to feed my younger brothers and sisters. What will I do if Mrs. Bowditch turns me out?”
Rees let her sob until she ran out of tears and then returned to his questions. “How long since you spoke to Richard?”
“Three weeks, I think. I had to tell him—” She gestured to her belly. “I’m beginning to show.”
“I must believe you’ve seen him since then,” Rees said. “Even if you didn’t speak.” She hesitated and he knew as clearly as if she’d shouted at him that she knew something important. “You have seen him, haven’t you?” he asked. And then, with dawning understanding, he cried, “You saw him the night of the murder, didn’t you?” He leaned toward her. “Kate, he’s facing the rope. If he’s guilty, he should be punished. But if he’s innocent, then I need to know everything I can to save him from hanging.” Still she did not speak, although she swept her eyes away from him, her cheeks reddening. “One of the hands saw Richard come up from the cottage,” Rees said. “I know he was there and argued with his father.” He watched the words percolate through her mind, and finally she nodded.
“I saw him that night from the window of Ben’s room.” She gestured to the house at the foot of the slope. “I was putting Ben to bed.”
“And what time was this?”
“Dusk. Just getting dark.” Rees nodded. It was probably about seven, then. “Munch had been barking for a long time. Unusually long. Then he stopped. I glanced out the window and saw Richard.”
“Was he going down to the cottage or coming back?”
“He walked across the field and went inside. But he came home only a little while later. Ben was saying his prayers.…”
A sudden clear picture of Kate, lingering by the window, hoping to see the father of her baby, popped into Rees’s mind. Poor child. “How long?”
“Just a few minutes, really.” She stopped short and then added in a hushed voice, “I heard him arguing with his father. And then Richard came flying up the road, Munch at his heels, back into the house.”
“What did he look like?” Rees asked. “What did you see?”
“He … he…” She stumbled to a stop.
“Tell me,” Rees demanded. She flinched. “Tell me.”
“His shirt was dirty, the right arm spattered with—with dark splashes.”
Rees sat back, nodding. Blood, of course. “And what time did you leave Ben’s room?”
“I sat with him until he fell asleep. It was dark by then and Mrs. Bowditch’s grandfather clock was striking the half hour.”
“Seven thirty,” Rees said.
Kate nodded in confirmation. “You don’t really think he killed his father, do you?” She looked down at her clenched hands. “He wouldn’t. I know him.”
“It’s possible he didn’t,” Rees said, pitying the poor wench in front of him. She did not know Richard as well as she claimed. “But what you told me helps.”
“Then someone else killed the master,” she said, raising hopeful eyes. “Maybe one of those wandering tinkers?…”
“Maybe,” Rees agreed, although he discounted that possibility as unlikely. “Please don’t worry about this anymore. I’ll discover the truth. You concentrate upon your baby.”
She smiled sadly. “But they’re connected. Don’t you see? How will my baby have a name if Richard is hanged?”
Rees said nothing. Likeliest, Richard would not acknowledge the baby anyway, but it seemed cruel to say so. She must know it, too. As Rees set off down the slope, she threw her apron over her eyes and began sobbing again.
As he passed the house, he looked up, trying to identify Ben’s window in the row of three. On the house’s top level, the windows were high enough to easily overlook the weaver’s cottage. Pausing to study those windows, Rees wondered if Kate might have seen something else and not realized its importance. She lacked the mental quickness possessed by Grace, and he had asked only about Richard. He made a mental note to ask her if she’d seen anyone else.
From the crest of the hill, he could see the cottage and imagine a witness watching Richard hurtle out of the door and sprint up the incline. The boy would be easily identifiable. Deciding he would speak to the stable hand as soon as possible, Rees descended the hill and went through the cottage’s open door. The spoiled food on the kitchen floor was gone, but neither the ashes in the hearth nor the pot over them had been cleaned up. Although a pail of soapy water stood by the dried blood, and dark streaks on the floor betrayed recent scrubbing, the room was empty. Rees paused, staring down at the stain. The brownish mark had been scoured so hard, the wooden planks were furred. Soon Molly would inter Nate’s body in the family graveyard and only this mark would remain, the last remnant of Nate’s presence. Rees sighed.
A sudden sound drew his attention, and he advanced cautiously into the weaving room. Marsh stood at the back, staring around in bewilderment. “It’s gone,” he said.
“What’s gone?”
“Rachel’s shawl.” Marsh stared around as though the shawl might suddenly appear.
“Maybe she took it up to the main house,” Rees suggested.
Marsh shook his head. “She wouldn’t. She’s still knitting it. Anyway, the mistress…” He stopped and started again. “Nate gave her a bag of dyed yarns to use. Rachel knows Mrs. Bowditch will envy her those yarns.…”
Now Rees looked around as well. “What did the shawl look like?”
“Nate sampled new dyes by staining yarn, so the shawl is many colors; Rachel’s coat of many colors, we called it,” he said with a faint smile.
“Upstairs?”
“No. No one ever went up there.”
“It’ll turn up,” Rees said. He understood why Marsh was focused on this small problem; he wanted to avoid thinking of Nate’s death. “Maybe I should look around upstairs just in case.…”
“No one ever went up there but Nate!” Marsh shouted.
His protectiveness sparked Rees’s curiosity; this was the second time Marsh had discouraged Rees from searching the loft. Why? What was he trying to hide? Rees had seen nothing of note upstairs. But now he would search everything.
“All right,” he said now. Turning, he went into the dye room. As he looked around at the roots and flowers, he wondered how Nate knew which would produce a color. Rees ran his hand over a scattering of pokeberries drying upon a sheet of rough tow cloth. Burgundy streaks appeared under his fingers. The stains looked uncomfortably like blood. With a shudder, he went out the back door. This time he looked around more carefully. Except for the closely cropped vegetation just outside the door and the path to the left, the trees and underbrush grew wild and jungle thick. He followed the sound of running water, struggling through the intertwined underbrush until he found the pond. A large beaver dam built before the spillway had created another stream that rushed down the new channel and disappeared into the thicket. Nate had adopted it for his own purposes. Bundles of flax stems rotted underneath the water, and when Rees ran his hands over them, pieces of husk broke and floated away with the current. They were ready to be heckled, the fibers removed. He walked alongside the stream away from the pond, tracking the bright flecks of dye until he came again to the rope where Nate had hung his samples.
Rees returned to the edge of the pond. From here the barns, the stable, and the brick summer kitchen were clearly visible and the lowing of a sick cow carried over the water. He looked back at the cottage, almost completely hidden by the trees and lush greenery beneath them. Even the leafless trees of winter would not reveal this cottage; several evergreens tucked in between the maples knitted their branches together into a green wall. A man familiar with this farm could easily escape through the underbrush with no one the wiser.
Rees battled up the hill, through the brush, and around to the front of the cottage. The steep slope provided a barricade. And, to the east, behind the small fields, grew another thick wall of trees. These obstructions could not be coincidental. Rees shook his head; Nate had paid a dear price for his privacy. What had he been so desperate to hide? Somehow Marsh was involved. Rees considered him as a possible murderer. He seemed to love Nate, but perhaps there was a secret Rees hadn’t discovered yet.
A sudden clang rang out, its clamor summoning family and help alike to dinner. Rees did not want to eat with either group, too awkward by half, and before Marsh could appear with an invitation, Rees hurried to his wagon. He collected Bessie and soon they were on the road home.
Chapter Five
David, along with the few hands he now employed to help him, was back in the fields by the time Rees arrived home. He unhitched Bessie and released her into the paddock. Then he went around to the back door. Lydia sat on the back step, snapping pole beans. She looked up in surprise. “I didn’t expect you so early,” she said. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet,” he said. As Lydia jumped to her feet and hurried inside, Rees went to the trough to wash up. The water was cool and refreshing on his skin as he scrubbed away the dust of the road. When he stepped into the kitchen, Lydia put a bowl of thick stew at his place.
“What happened today?” She quickly sliced a loaf of bread and brought it to the table. Rees pulled out her chair before sitting down himself.
“Richard is still missing and I haven’t been able to talk to him yet. Besides Richard, Nate had a daughter, Grace. I met her. She looks exactly like Nate. And there’s a little boy named Ben. About three, I would guess, and still in skirts.” He looked up at Lydia, his eyes resting fondly upon her. “Perhaps the marriage was happy once.”
Lydia raised a dubious eyebrow.
“And I met the constable.”
“Ah, the drunken lout described by Mr. Potter,” she said.
Rees didn’t miss her sarcasm. “Yes. Except, he’s not a drunken lout—well, not as he was described to me. In fact, I suspect he’s much sharper than people believe. Mrs. Bowditch kept back some information.…” He heard his voice rise with simmering anger and inhaled a deep calming breath.
“Information that made Richard appear guilty, no doubt,” Lydia said. “She would, though, wouldn’t she?”
“Maybe,” Rees said. Molly Bowditch had not helped her cause by doing so. With a effort, he pushed all thoughts of the murder to the back of his mind. “And what’s been happening here?”
“David is thinking of planting rye next year,” Lydia said, twisting her hands together.
Rees contemplated her expression thoughtfully. “What else?” He knew something weighed upon her.
“Tomorrow is market day.” She hesitated and then blurted, “I plan to go with David and sell my honey and eggs. The hens are laying well.…”
Rees said nothing. He didn’t want her to go to market—well, he didn’t mind if she sold her honey and eggs with the other farmwives, but he didn’t want the good folk of Dugard to see her with either David or Rees himself and assume they were a couple. He knew Dugard and he knew how tongues would wag. The old biddies would have him wed to Lydia in the time it took for the story to fly around town. Although it shamed him to admit it, that fear also underlay his reluctance to hire kitchen help. Someone like Mary Martha would chatter out everything she knew. He wanted to wed Lydia, someday, in a future he couldn’t yet visualize, but he would not be forced.
Lydia looked at him and smiled faintly, reading his thoughts without difficulty. “If anyone asks, we’ll tell the truth, that I am your housekeeper.”
Rees frowned. “Our finances are not so poor you need to sell anything at market,” he said. “I still have the money I made last year. And, as soon as I set up my loom, I’ll begin weaving again. I’m certain to be offered more work than I can handle.”
Lydia’s bereft expression made Rees feel both guilty and cruel. “In Zion, my Sisters always surrounded me. And although we spoke little, I knew they were there. Here I’m always alone. Except for David. And you.” For several minutes they sat in silence. Then Lydia jumped to her feet and began stirring up the fire.
“You’re going to do it anyway,” Rees said, staring at the stubborn set of her shoulders.
She turned, her eyes sparkling defiantly. “Yes. Why not? After all, I am only your housekeeper.”
Rees jerked back, his cheeks stinging as though she’d slapped him. “All right,” he said after he’d caught his breath. “I’ll drive you and David into Dugard.”
“Are you certain? After all, people might see us together.”