And then the first tears did come. Martha dashed them away. She said, “Will you tell Birdie thank you? Tell them all?”

“Of course,” Ethan said.

“And tell her that the best part of marrying her brother is getting her as a sister.”

There, she had said it.

“Hey,” Daniel said, but he was smiling. “That’s a mighty odd way of accepting a proposal.”

“It was an odd proposal,” Martha said.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I had best get back.”

“Wait,” Martha said. “About Callie—”

He said, “Don’t worry about Callie, I promise I’ll take care of her.”

Martha had her doubts, but there was another matter that concerned her more. “If she needs a place to stay, she should take Ivy House. Will you tell her that?”

“That’s where she is now,” Ethan said. “I’m headed that way.”

“It’s unfair that I should have everything and she be left alone,” Martha said. “Whatever she needs, she should have. No matter how put out with me she may be, I want to be sure she is safe and comfortable.”

Ethan leaned over and kissed Martha on the cheek. Something he had never done before, but it felt right.

“Hey,” Daniel said again, but he stepped forward and hugged his cousin with his good arm. “Ethan,” he said. “Will you talk to Lily, try to put her at ease with this?”

“I don’t think you need worry about Lily anymore,” Ethan said. “It was her idea that you two go straight off and don’t come back until you’re good and married.”

Of all the strange and disturbing news Ethan had brought them, this was certainly the one that would occupy Martha for the longest time. She saw the confusion move across Daniel’s face too, and then it was gone, and in its place, grim determination.

“I wish there was time to write a note,” Martha told Ethan.

“And I wish I could paint like Lily,” Ethan said. “I’d paint the two of you standing on the porch against the sky with the mountains all around, and you’d see how you look when you’re happy. As it is I’ll just have to remind you when you forget. Now will you two get a move on?”

They waited for a moment until Ethan reached the curve in the path and then they raised their hands in farewell.

“Well, then,” Daniel said. She felt him looking at her. “If you’re sure.”

Nothing seemed sure to Martha right at this moment. The world had tilted out of its orbit.

Jiminy pawed the ground impatiently, and Florida followed suit.

“Everything is going so fast,” Martha said.

“Too fast, maybe.” He was standing away from her, too far to touch. And right now she wanted that, she needed that assurance. Maybe he saw it in her face because he reached out a hand, palm up. Martha took it and he bent his arm so that she came up against him. They stood there in the shade of the porch for a minute and then another, and little by little the tension drained away. Martha rested her head against his shoulder and shut out everything but the feel of his shirt against her cheek, the solid shape of him, and the smell of the sunshine hot on skin and leather and muslin, and the slow steady blossoming of something that could be, that just might be happiness.

It was the last thing she could have imagined about this moment. Martha’s mother was come to claim her, as she had always feared might happen. Her mother was here, but so was Daniel. First and foremost, Daniel was with her.

Chapter XXXIII

They were on their way home when Elizabeth realized where Callie must have gone. To Nathaniel she said, “I want to go sit with her. She’ll be very agitated and she shouldn’t be alone.”

And so they changed direction and found their way to Ivy House. There was a pot of violets on the front rail, velvety deep purple with touches of yellow that seemed to glow. There was beauty to be found even in the most difficult and sober of times, but Elizabeth doubted Callie would see it that way.

Joseph Crispin went by leading a donkey cart laden with empty chicken crates. They paused to speak a few words with him, and in that time Elizabeth had the sense of somebody watching them from the window. She put her hand on Nathaniel’s arm.

“I think it best if I go in alone,” she said.

He thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “But I don’t want you walking home alone past dark, do you hear me?”

Elizabeth’s first impulse was to shake off his caution, but then she thought again of Jemima and she nodded. “I don’t imagine I’ll be here that long, but come at dusk if I’m not home yet.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “We can take the girl home with us if you don’t like the idea of her alone here. I’ll sleep in the hayloft if that’s what it takes.”

Elizabeth caught his earlobe and brought him back down so that she could kiss him back, properly. They had come this far together and survived much worse than a spiteful and greedy Jemima Southern. And they had slept in the hayloft more than once. She would do it again, and gladly.

“Not without me,” she said, and then she went in to Callie.

The girl was sitting at the kitchen table with her hands folded before her. The little house was still and obviously empty.

“Mrs. Thicke’s gone to help Curiosity,” Callie said. “I told her to stay there until somebody sends for her.”

Elizabeth’s worry for the girl shifted and turned into unease.