Softly Falling (41 page)

Jack needn’t have worried. When he worked his way through snow and wind to the Buxton’s the next day to either get his orders for the day or his pay, Buxton made no comment about his threat.

“What’ll you have us do today, Mr. Buxton?” he asked.

“Stay close to home,” Mr. Buxton said, without looking up from papers he shuffled from one pile to the other. “Save the riding for a clear day.”

Since the boss seemed to be a mellow mood, he decided to raise a subject that had been on his mind since Lily had received the gut punch about her scoundrel father. For one day too many, he had watched her droop, flag, then rally and teach, at what personal price he didn’t know.

He leaned against the doorsill. “Mr. Buxton, would you consider letting Luella stay in my old place with Miss Carteret? Fothering could get her to you on weekends. It’d be safer for Luella and I think Miss Carteret would enjoy the company of an evening.”

Mr. Buxton looked him in the eyes finally. He raised his eyebrows in obvious thought and nodded. “I’m in agreement. I’ll tell Mrs. Buxton.”

“You don’t think she’ll mind?”

Buxton ran his hand over his face and then exposed a bleakness in his eyes that exceeded anything Lily could have come up with, even on a bad day. He began to understand his employer and felt a small surge of pity, which passed.

“My wife is troubled,” Buxton said, biting off each word as if dragging them from his throat hand over hand. That seemed to be all the honesty he could manage, and he turned back to his useless paperwork, dismissing Jack.

Luella couldn’t pack fast enough. Fothering helped.

“Wish I could take you along, Fothering,” Jack said as Fothering handed up Luella to him to perch on the front of his saddle, and then her bag of clothes.

“I’m needed here,” the butler said with little conviction. “You’re doing a good thing, Jack.” He stepped back and regarded the foreman. “What rank did you achieve in the Civil War?”

The question surprised Jack, coming at him out of the blue. “I started as a private at age thirteen, then moved up the ranks. I was commissioned a lieutenant about three weeks before Appomattox. Why?”

“If the war had lasted long enough, you’d have been a major general,” Fothering said. “You’re a leader. ’Bye, Luella. You be good to Miss Carteret.”

Flattered, Jack waved and walked his horse carefully through drifts to his old house. School was about to begin, but he came inside anyway with Luella, carrying her bag. He nodded to the Sansever children and tugged Lily aside while Luella took her spot on the bench.

“I asked Mr. Buxton to let Luella stay with you during the week.” He leaned closer to whisper, “It’s not good there at the Buxtons.”

Lily nodded, her eyes on her students.

“It’s not good for you to be alone, either. Stuff can fester if there’s only you.”

She turned to look at him then, and her lips were so close to his that they both backed up. Chantal giggled, and he felt his face turn into a flame. He took her farther into the corner of the small front room.

“I’m not doing this right, but I never should have done what I did a few nights ago.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about that, Jack,” she whispered, back. “Please don’t.” She chuckled. “Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on or maybe a lap. Go on, now, it’s time for class.”

She followed him out the door and closed it behind her. The sky was so blue and crackling cold and the snow so bright that he winced, thinking of the frigid day ahead.

He stood there, wanting to say more, but unsure of what would be right. And while he wondered, Lily kissed his cheek and hurried back inside.

C
HAPTER
38

T
hanksgiving was going to be just another day on the calendar, even though Lily’s children introduced her to pilgrims and turkey and starving times. In turn, she told them about Harvest Home festivals in England, and sugar cane harvests in Barbados. Trouble was, this turned everyone’s thoughts to food, so the day before Thanksgiving was not a profitable one in the Temple of Education as snow flew outside.

“Rolls with butter,” Luella said, and Chantal sighed.

“Turkey, for sure,” Nick said.

“Pumpkin pie with rum sauce,” Amelie added. “What about you, Miss Carteret?”

What about me?
Lily thought.
I crave trifle and three kinds of cake and marzipan
. “I have enough right now,” she said, and correctly interpreted the skeptical looks from four children. “I do!”

Strangely, she did, and so she told Jack that night when he came over to sit with her, as he did every night, now that Luella was here. She didn’t question his presence any more, understanding that he felt comfortable to be with her as long as they weren’t alone. Son of a tenant farmer, he had remarked to her more than once that he was no gentleman, except that he was. Sometimes he said very little while she helped Luella with her more advanced studies, and then shooed the child off to bed with a trusty iron pig wrapped in a towel that was getting singed in the middle.

“Miss Carteret does this so when she comes to bed, there will be a warm spot for her,” Luella solemnly announced one night, which made Jack smile.

He didn’t laugh any more. Sometimes Lily thought he only smiled because she expected it of him. When the door was closed, she sat beside him and continued reading
Ivanhoe
out loud, stopping now and then to make him read a few stumbling sentences. Hard to imagine that someone could break into a sweat in such a cold room, all from reading, but he did.

She noticed how it relaxed him when she read, so she read more and more each night. She read to everyone during dinner each night in the dining room, then read the same chapters again with Jack alone. She had suggested that they start another book, but he shook his head at that.

“I think we need to ration our books,” he told her. “It’s going to be a long winter.”

She wasn’t even sure he heard anything when she read, because his eyes were either closed, or they were open as he stared at the wall, miles away in his mind. His eyes were closed tonight, so she stopped reading, set the book aside, and just rested her head on his shoulder.

He started and opened his eyes, then slowly put his arm around her. After an hour, he got up, went through the process of piling on two shapeless sweaters, his coat, mittens, muffler, and hat, and then left without a word. It took the cold to finally drive her to bed that night, long after she should have been asleep.

Thanksgiving Day blew in with snow. As Lily stood at the obscured window and shivered, she wondered at her foolishness in thinking the snow beautiful. The days when she had enjoyed the sight of it softly falling seemed to belong to another century.

Everyone had already agreed to wait until noon to eat their usual roast and beans, so Lily and Luella munched on crackers at the house and Luella drew turkeys and pilgrims on a strip of building tape.

“I’ll run it down the center of the table,” she said. “That will make the roast special.”

There had been no word from the Buxtons that Luella was to join them in their house for Thanksgiving, and the child never mentioned it. Lily sat close and watched Luella draw, remembering her own loneliness. There hadn’t been a Miss Carteret for her.

“Might I draw too?” she asked, and Luella handed her a pencil. Together they finished the runner, rolled it up, and were bundled up when Jack knocked on the door for them.

“Hang tight onto the rope,” he shouted over the roar of the wind.

Slowly, hand over hand on the rope, they made their way to the cookshack, each step harder than the last until Lily, exhausted from the effort, wanted to turn around and crawl back in her bed. She could pull up the covers and wait for spring.

When she thought she couldn’t manage another step, the door opened and welcoming hands pulled them inside.

Lily let Chantal and Amelie unwind her muffler and help her from her coat. As she grew accustomed to the relative warmth, she sniffed the air. Oh, it couldn’t be. She sniffed again, then looked around in amazement.

Madeleine had scrounged up a tablecloth from some dark recess. It covered the longer table that was set with the usual steel utensils and thick china plates. A great slab of pork rested on her largest platter, flanked on each side by the usual beans, and applesauce made from dried apples and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Lily stared and came closer. She knew her eyes had to be playing tricks, but there it was, pork with crackling bits of fat. She looked at the men of the Bar Dot, who were all smiles. “Where in the world did this come from?” she asked.

“The Lord giveth,” Preacher said.

“Come now,” she said, and he gave her a wounded look. “Pigs just don’t drop out of the sky!”

Even Jack had to laugh. “We came across this pig last week, trudging along with some cattle.”

“Whose cattle?” she asked.

“Someone’s,” Pierre said vaguely. “And wouldn’t you know,
Monsieur le Cochon
stopped right in front of my horse. What was I to do?”

“Ask around, I hope,” Lily said as she came closer and breathed in the fragrance. Steam rose from the mound of pork.
But don’t ask too hard
, she thought, delighted.

“I did ask around,” Pierre insisted. He took her arm and guided her to the bench.

“
Really
?”

“He did,” Jack assured her with a straight face. “I was there and heard it all. Pierre stood in the middle of the pasture, looked around, cupped his hand to his mouth, and whispered, ‘Anyone belong to this pig?’ We didn’t hear a thing.” He drew in a deep lungful of fragrance. “We couldn’t just leave it there all friendless. Happy Thanksgiving, Lily. Let’s have a better one next year.”

Lily tried unsuccessfully to wipe the corner of her mouth without being noticed. She dabbed at her eyes with even less success. Madeleine beamed at her from the doorway to the kitchen. Lily looked around at her friends and her students, feeling more blessed than at any time in her life.

“Wait.” Luella held up her hand and unrolled the Thanksgiving table runner she and Lily had made. She stepped back, pleased.

“I really think someone should ask a blessing,” Lily said.

Jack gestured to Preacher. Touched, Lily noticed that Jack wore a white shirt, instead of the two wool shirts she had seen him in for the last month since the first blizzard. In fact everyone had put on clean shirts.

Preacher stepped forward until he stood right in front of the pork. His eyes grew serious, and he took him time looking at each one of them. “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen. I never meant anything more,” he concluded simply.

With a scraping of benches, they all sat down except Madeleine, who darted into the kitchen and returned with nine biscuits, small, to be sure, but biscuits. Lily watched the Sansever children eye the fluffy bits of goodness with their light brown tops. She knew there wasn’t any butter, but there suddenly Madeleine whipped out a little lump of yellow heaven from behind her back.

“I’ve been saving it.” She handed the plate with the biscuits to Chantal. “Take one,
mon cherie
.”

Chantal shook her head and passed on the plate. Amelie did the same, and then Luella, even though her eyes lingered on the biscuits. Jack held up his hand.

“That’s enough,” he said, his voice firm. “There are nine biscuits and each of you is eating one. Start over, Chantal.”

She did, gave him a grin, and sent the plate around until it was empty. The beans went around next and then the pork, luscious slabs of pork, heavenly and greasy.

“Shouldn’t we save some of it?” Luella asked, doubtful.

“Not today,” Jack said. “I sent Will over to the Buxtons with a nice share for their table. Madeleine saved the bones and marrow to flavor our beans this week. We’re going to stuff ourselves until it’s gone, and I won’t have an argument.”

It was quietly said. Lily wondered if he ever raised his voice and decided it wasn’t necessary. Leaders were like that, she decided as she took her tiny share of the butter, doled it onto the little biscuit, and then turned her attention to the pork. She ate the fat first, hungry for it, aware that the beef they had been eating, while plentiful, had been lean with no fat. She hadn’t realized how much she craved fat until it was there before her on her plate. The others did the same thing, then, in near silence, they demolished the pig that had appeared from nowhere.

When everyone sat there, stunned, Madeleine handed around the applesauce, which vanished too, settling inside on top of Thanksgiving pork.

“I told Preacher he could have a minute with a little Holy Writ,” Jack said. “Preacher?”

The young man from Alabama took out his Bible. “There are lots of verses about Thanksgiving, but this is the one we need.” He cleared his throat, and spoke with some command, maybe remembering an earlier pulpit. “It’s from Thessalonians, one of Paul’s letters. ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.’ ” He shut the Bible and looked at Jack. “Sir, I thought maybe each of us could go around the table and mention one thing we’re thankful for.”