Authors: Judith McNaught
Tags: #Man-Woman Relationships, #England, #Historical Fiction, #Americans - England, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #Americans, #Amnesia, #Historical, #English Fiction, #General, #Love Stories
Until You (2 page)
Stephen's warning shout came too late.
L
eaning heavily on his cane, the ancient butler stood in the shabby drawing room and listened in respectful silence as his illustrious visitor imparted the news that the butler's employer had just met an untimely demise. Not until Lord Westmoreland had finished his tale did the servant permit himself to show any reaction, and even then, Hodgkin sought only to reassure. "How very distressing, my lord, for poor Lord Burleton, and for you as well. But then—accidents do happen, don't they, and one cannot blame one's self. Mishaps are mishaps, and that's why we call them that."
"I'd hardly call running a man down and killing him a 'mishap,' " Stephen retorted, with a bitterness that was directed at himself, not the servant. Although the early morning accident had been much the fault of the drunken young baron who'd bounded into the street in front of Stephen's carriage, the fact was that Stephen had been holding the reins, and he was alive and unharmed, while young Burleton was dead. Furthermore, it seemed that there was no one to mourn Burleton's passing, and at the moment, that seemed a final injustice to Stephen. "Surely, your employer must have some family somewhere—someone to whom I could explain personally about the accident?"
Hodgkin merely shook his head, distracted by the dire realization that he was suddenly unemployed again and likely to remain so for the rest of his life. He'd obtained this position only because no one else had been willing to work as butler, valet, footman, and cook—and for the absurdly small wages Burleton was able to pay.
Embarrassed by his temporary lapse into self-pity and his lack of proper decorum, Hodgkin cleared his throat and hastily added, "Lord Burleton had no close living relatives, as I—I said. And since I've only been in the baron's employ for three weeks, his acquaintances aren't really known to—" He broke off, a look of horror on his face. "In my shock, I forgot about his fiancée! The nuptials were to take place this week."
A fresh wave of guilt washed over Stephen, but he nodded, and his voice became brisk and purposeful. "Who is she and where can I find her?"
"All I know is that she's an American heiress the baron met when he was abroad, and that she's to arrive tomorrow on a ship from the Colonies. Her father was too ill to make the voyage, so I presume she's either travelling with a relative or, perhaps, with a female companion. Last night, Lord Burleton was commemorating the end of his bachelorhood. That's all I know."
"You must know her name! What did Burleton call her?"
Caught between nervousness at Lord Westmoreland's terse impatience and shame at his own deteriorating memory, Hodgkin said a little defensively, "As I said, I was new to the baron's employ, and not taken into his confidence. In my presence, he… he called her 'my fiancée,' or else 'my heiress.' "
"Think, man! You must have heard him refer to her name at some time!"
"No… I… Wait, yes! I do recall something… I recall that her name made me remember how very much I used to enjoy visiting
Lancashire as a boy.
Lancaster!'' Hodgkin exclaimed in delight. "Her surname is
Lancaster, and her given name is
Sharon… No, that's not it. Charise! Charise
Lancaster!"
Hodgkin was rewarded for his efforts with a slight nod of approval accompanied by yet another rapid-fire question: "What about the name of her ship?"
Hodgkin was so encouraged and so proud that he actually banged his cane upon the floor with glee as the answer popped into his mind. "The
Morning Star
!" he crowed, then flushed with embarrassment at his boisterous tone and unseemly behavior.
"Anything else? Every detail could be helpful when I deal with her."
"I do recall some other trifles, but I shouldn't like to indulge in idle gossip."
"Let's hear it," Stephen said with unintended curtness.
"The lady is young and 'quite a pretty little thing,' the baron said. I also gathered that she was rather madly in love with him and wanted the union, while it was the baron's title that was of primary interest to her father."
Stephen's last hope that this marriage was simply one of convenience had died at the news that the girl was "madly in love" with her fiancé. "What about Burleton?" he asked as he pulled on his gloves. "Why did he want the marriage?"
"I can only speculate, but he seemed to share the young lady's feelings."
"Wonderful," Stephen murmured grimly, turning toward the door.
Not until Lord Westmoreland left did Hodgkin permit himself to give in to despair at his own predicament. He was unemployed and virtually penniless again. A moment ago, he'd almost considered asking, even begging, Lord Westmoreland to recommend him to someone, but that would have been inexcusably presumptuous, as well as futile. As Hodgkin had discovered during the two years it had taken him to finally obtain a position with Lord Burleton, no one wanted a butler, valet, or footman whose hands were spotted with age and whose body was so old and so stooped that he could neither straighten it nor force it to a brisk walk.
His thin shoulders drooping with despair, his joints beginning to ache dreadfully, Hodgkin turned and shuffled toward his room at the back of the shabby apartment. He was halfway there when the earl's sharp, impatient knock forced him to make his slow way back to the front door. "Yes, my lord?" he said.
"It occurred to me as I was leaving," Lord Westmoreland said in a curt, businesslike voice, "that Burleton's death will deprive you of whatever wages he owed you. My secretary, Mr. Wheaton, will see that you're compensated." As he turned to leave, he added, "My households are always in need of competent staff. If you aren't longing for retirement right now, you might consider contacting Mr. Wheaton about that as well. He'll handle the details." And then he was gone.
Hodgkin closed the door and turned, staring in stunned disbelief at the dingy room while vigor and youth began to surge and rush warmly through his veins. Not only did he have a position to go to, but a position in a household belonging to one of the most admired, influential noblemen in all of Europe!
The position hadn't been offered out of pity; of that Hodgkin was almost certain, for the Earl of Langford wasn't known as the sort of man to coddle servants, or anyone else. In fact, rumor had it that the earl was a rather distant, exacting, man, with the highest standards for his households and his servants.
Despite that, Hodgkin couldn't completely suppress the humiliating notion that the earl might have offered him employment out of pity, until he suddenly remembered something the earl had said, something that filled Hodgkin with pleasure and pride: Lord Westmoreland had specifically implied that he regarded Hodgkin as
competent
. He'd used that very word!
Competent!
Slowly, Hodgkin turned toward the hall mirror, and with his hand upon the handle of his black cane, he gazed at his reflection. Competent…
He straightened his spine, though the effort was a bit painful, then he squared his narrow shoulders. With his free hand he reached down and carefully smoothed the front of his faded black jacket. Why, he didn't look so very old, Hodgkin decided—not a day over three-and-seventy! Lord Westmoreland certainly hadn't thought him decrepit or useless. No, indeed! Stephen David Elliott Westmoreland, the Earl of Langford, thought Albert Hodgkin would be a
worthy addition
to his staff!
Lord Westmoreland
—who possessed estates all over Europe, along with noble titles inherited through his mother and two ancestors who'd named him as their heir—thought
Albert
Hodgkin would be a worthy addition to one of his magnificent households!
Hodgkin tipped his head to the side, trying to imagine how he would look wearing the elegant Langford livery of green and gold, but his vision seemed to blur and waver. He lifted his hand, his long thin fingers touching, feeling at the corner of his eye, where there was an unfamiliar wetness.
He brushed the tear away, along with the sudden, crazy impulse to wave his cane in the air and dance a little jig. Dignity, Hodgkin very strongly felt, was far more appropriate in a man who was about to join the household staff of Lord Stephen Westmoreland.
T
he sun was a fiery disc sliding into the purple horizon by the time a seaman walked down the dock to the coach that had been waiting there since morning. "There she is—the
Morning Star
," he told Stephen, who'd been leaning against the door of the vehicle, idly watching a drunken brawl taking place outside a nearby pub. Before raising his arm to point out the ship, the seaman cast a cautious glance at the two coachmen, who both held pistols in clear view, and who were obviously not as indifferent as their master to the dangers lurking everywhere on the wharf. "That's her, right there," he said to Stephen, indicating a small ship just gliding into port, its sails dim silhouettes in the deepening twilight. "And she's only a bit late."
Straightening, Stephen nodded to one of the coachmen, who tossed the seaman a coin for his trouble, then he walked slowly down the dock, wishing that his mother or his sister-in-law could have been here with him when Burleton's bride disembarked. The presence of concerned females might have helped soften the blow when he delivered the tragic news to the girl, news that was going to shatter her dreams.
"This is a nightmare!" Sheridan Bromleigh cried at the astonished cabin boy who'd come to tell her for the second time that "a gentleman" was waiting for her on the pier—a gentleman she naturally assumed was Lord Burleton. "Tell him to wait. Tell him I
died
. No, tell him we're still indisposed." She shoved the door closed, shot the bolt, then pressed her back to the panel, her gaze darting to the frightened maid who was perched on the edge of the narrow cot in the cabin they'd shared, twisting a handkerchief in her plump hands. "It's a nightmare, and when I wake up in the morning, it will all be over, won't it, Meg?"
Meg shook her head so vigorously that it set the ribbons on her white cap bobbing. "It's no dream. You'll have to talk to the baron and tell him something—something that won't vex him, and something he'll believe."
"Well, that certainly eliminates the truth,"
Sheridan said bitterly. "I mean, he's bound to be just a trifle miffed if I tell him I've managed to misplace his fiancée somewhere along the English coastline. The
truth
is I
lost
her!"
"You didn't lose her, she eloped! Miss Charise ran off with Mr. Morrison when we stopped in the last port."
"Regardless of that, what matters is that she was entrusted to my care, and I failed in my duty to her father and to the baron. There's nothing to do but go out there and tell the baron that."
"You mustn't!" Meg cried. "He'll have us thrown straight into a dungeon! Besides, you have to make him feel kindly toward us because we have no one else to turn to, nowhere to go. Miss Charise took all the money with her, and there isn't a shilling to buy passage home."
"I'll find some sort of work." Despite her confident words, Sherry's voice trembled with strain, and she looked about the tiny cabin, unconsciously longing for somewhere to hide.
"You don't have any references," Meg argued, her voice filling with tears. "And we don't have anywhere to sleep tonight and no money for lodgings. We're going to land in the gutter. Or worse!"
"What could be worse?"
Sheridan said, but when Meg opened her mouth to answer, Sherry held up a hand and said with a trace of her normal humor and spirit, "No, don't, I beg you. Don't even consider 'white slavery.' "
Meg paled and her mouth fell open, her voice dropping to a dazed whisper. "White… slavery."
"Meg! For heaven's sake, I meant it as a… a joke. A tasteless joke."
"If you go out there and tell him the truth, they'll toss both of us straight into a dungeon."
"Why," Sherry burst out, closer to hysterics than she'd ever been in her life, "do you keep talking about a dungeon?"
"Because there's laws here, miss, and you—we—we've broken some. Not on purpose, of course, but they won't care. Here, they toss you into a dungeon—no questions asked, nor answers heard. Here, there's only one sort of people who matter, and they're the Quality. What if he thinks we killed her, or stole her money, or sold her, or something evil like that? It would be his word against yours, and you aren't nobody, so the law will be on his side."
Sheridan
tried to say something reassuring or humorous, but her physical and emotional stamina had both suffered from weeks of unabated tension and stress, compounded by a long bout of illness during the voyage, followed by Charise's disappearance two days ago. She should never have embarked on this mad scheme in the first place, she realized. She'd overestimated her ability to cope with a spoiled, foolish seventeen-year-old girl, convincing herself that her common sense and practical nature, combined with her experience teaching deportment at Miss Talbot's School for Young Ladies, which Charise had attended, would enable her to deal admirably with any difficulties that arose on the trip. Charise's dour father had been so deluded by Sheridan's brisk, competent manner that, when his heart ailment suddenly prevented him from travelling to England, he'd chosen Sheridan over several older, more experienced, applicants to escort his daughter to England—Sheridan, who was barely three years older than she. Of course, Charise had something to do with his decision; she'd wheedled and sulked and insisted that Miss Bromleigh be the one to accompany her, until he finally conceded. Miss Bromleigh had been the one who helped her write her letters to the baron. Miss Bromleigh, she told him, wasn't like those other sour-faced companions he'd interviewed; Miss Bromleigh would be amusing company. Miss Bromleigh, she warned him slyly, wouldn't let her become so homesick that she wanted to return to
America and her papa, instead of marrying the baron!
That was certainly true,
Sheridan thought with disgust. Miss Bromleigh was probably responsible for her elopement with a near-stranger, an impulsive act that loosely resembled the plot of one of the romantic novels that
Sheridan had shared with Charise on the voyage. Aunt Cornelia was so opposed to those novels, and to those "foolish romantic notions" they put forth, that
Sheridan normally read them only in secret, with the curtains closed around her cot. There, in solitude, she could experience the delicious excitement of being loved and courted by dashing, handsome noblemen who stole her heart with a glance. Afterward, she could lie back on the pillows, close her eyes, and pretend that she had been the heroine, dancing at a ball in a glorious gown with pale golden hair in an elaborate upsweep… strolling in the park with her dainty hand resting upon his sleeve and her pale golden hair peeping from beneath the brim of her fashionable bonnet. She'd read each novel so many times that she could recite her favorite scenes from memory and substitute her own name for the heroine's…
The baron captured
Sheridan's hand and pressed it to his lips as he pledged his eternal devotion. "You are my one and only love
…"
The earl was so overwhelmed by
Sheridan's beauty that he lost control and kissed her cheek. "Forgive me, but I cannot help myself. I adore you!"
And then there was her particular favorite… the one she most often liked to imagine:
The prince took her in his strong embrace and clasped her to his heart. "If I had a hundred kingdoms, I would trade them all for you, my dearest love. I was nothing until you."
Lying in bed, she would alter the plots of the novels, the dialogue, and even the situations and locales to suit herself, but she never, ever changed her imaginary hero. He and he alone remained ever constant, and she knew every detail about him, because she had designed him herself: He was strong and masculine and forceful, but he was kind and wise and patient and witty, as well. He was tall and handsome too—with thick dark hair and wonderful blue eyes that could be seductive or piercing or sparkle with humor. He would love to laugh with her, and she would tell him amusing anecdotes to make him do it. He would love to read, and he would be more knowledgeable than she and perhaps a bit more worldly. But not too worldly or proud or sophisticated. She hated arrogance and stuffiness and she particularly disliked being arbitrarily ordered about. She accepted such things from the fathers of her students at school, but she knew she'd wouldn't be able to abide such a superior male attitude from a husband.
And, of course, her imaginary hero would become her husband. He would propose on bended knee, and say things like, "I didn't know there was happiness, until you… I didn't know what love was, until you… I was only half a man with half a heart… until you." She liked the idea of being truly needed by her imaginary hero, of being valued for more than beauty. After he proposed with such sweet, compelling words, how could she do anything but accept? And so, to the envious surprise of everyone in
Richmond,
Virginia
, they would be married. Afterward, he would whisk her, and Aunt Cornelia, off to his wonderful mansion on a hill, where he would devote himself to making them happy, and where their most pressing worry would be which gowns to wear. He would help her locate her father, too, and he would come to live with them.
Alone in the darkness, it didn't matter that she didn't have a prayer of meeting such a man or that if by some wild chance she did encounter such a paragon of perfection, he wouldn't give Miss Sheridan Bromleigh a passing glance. In the morning, she would scrape her thick red hair back off her forehead and fasten it into a practical coil at the nape, then she would leave for school, and no one would ever know that prim Miss Bromleigh, who was already regarded as a "spinster" by students, staff, and parents, was an incurable romantic in her heart.
She'd fooled everyone, including herself, into thinking she was the epitome of practicality and efficiency. Now, as a result of
Sheridan's boundless overconfidence, Charise was going to spend her life married to an ordinary Mister, instead of a Milord, a man who could make her life utterly miserable if he chose. If Charise's father didn't die of his fury and heartbreak, he was undoubtedly going to spend the rest of
his
life thinking of effective ways to make
Sheridan's and Aunt Cornelia's lives miserable. And poor, timid Meg, who'd been Charise's overworked maid for five long years, was surely going to be turned out without a reference, which would effectively destroy her future prospects for obtaining a decent position. And these were the best possibilities!
These prospects were based on the assumption that Sheridan and Meg might somehow be
able
to return home. If Meg was correct, and
Sheridan was half-convinced she was, then Meg was going to spend the rest of her life in a dungeon, and Sheridan Bromleigh—"sensible, competent" Sheridan Bromleigh—was going to be her cell mate.
Tears of fear and guilt stung Sherry's eyes as she thought of the calamities she'd caused, and all because of her naive overconfidence and her foolish desire to see the glittering city of
London and the fashionable aristocracy she'd read about in her novels. She should have listened to Aunt Cornelia, who'd lectured her for years that longing to see such wondrous sights was tantamount to reaching beyond one's station in life; that pride was as sinful in the eyes of the Lord as greed and sloth; and that modesty in a female was far more attractive to gentlemen than mere beauty.
Aunt Cornelia had been right in the first two of those beliefs,
Sheridan belatedly realized. Sherry had tried to heed her aunt's warnings, but there was one major dissimilarity between her aunt and herself that made those warnings about going to
England terribly difficult for Sherry to accept: Aunt Cornelia
loved
predictability. She thrived on rituals, treasured the identical day-to-day routines that sometimes made Sherry feel like weeping with despair.
A
s she stared blindly across the tiny cabin at poor Meg, Sherry wished very devoutly that she were back in Richmond, sitting across from her aunt in the tiny little three-room house they shared, enjoying a nice, routine pot of tepid tea, and looking forward to an entire
lifetime
of tepid tea and tedium.
But if Meg was right about British laws… then Sheridan wouldn't be going home ever, wouldn't set eyes on her aunt again, and that thought was almost her undoing.
Six years ago, when she first went to live with her mother's elder sister, the prospect of never seeing Cornelia Faraday again would have made Sheridan positively gleeful, but Sheridan's father hadn't given her a choice. Until then, he had let her travel with him in a wagon loaded with all manner of goods, from fur pelts and perfume to iron pots and pitchforks, luxuries and necessaries that he sold or bartered at farmhouses and cabins along their "route."
Their "route" was whichever fork in the road took their fancy when they came upon it—usually heading south, along the eastern seaboard, in winter and north in summer. Sometimes they turned west when a particularly glorious sunset beckoned, or they angled southwest because a gurgling stream angled in that direction. In winter, when the snow sometimes made travelling difficult or impossible, there was always a farmer or a storekeeper who had need of an extra pair of willing hands, and her Irish father would trade his labor for a few nights' lodging.
As a result, by the time Sheridan was twelve, she'd slept in everything from a blanket in a hayloft to a feather bed in a house populated by a bevy of laughing ladies who wore vivid satin gowns with necklines so low their bosoms seemed to be in danger of toppling right out of them. But whether the mistress of their lodgings was a robust farmer's wife or a stern-faced preacher's wife or a lady in a purple satin dress trimmed with black feathers, their hostesses nearly always ended up doting on Patrick and fussing maternally over
Sheridan. Charmed by his ready smile, his unfailing courtesy, and his willingness to work hard and long for bed and board, the ladies soon began cooking extra-large portions for him, baking his favorite desserts, and volunteering to mend his clothing.
Their goodwill extended to
Sheridan too. They teased her affectionately about her mop of bright red hair and laughed when her father referred to her as his "little carrot." They let her stand on a stool when she volunteered to help wash dishes, and when she left, they gave her scraps of cloth or precious needles so she could fashion a new blanket or dress for her doll, Amanda.
Sheridan hugged them and told them that she and Amanda were both very grateful, and they smiled because they knew she meant it. They kissed her good-bye and whispered that she was going to be very beautiful someday, and
Sheridan laughed because she knew they couldn't
possibly
mean it. Then they watched Sheridan and her papa drive off in the wagon while they waved good-bye and called out "Godspeed" and "Come back soon."
Sometimes the people they stayed with hinted that her papa ought to remain to court one of their daughters or a neighbor's daughter, and the smile would remain on his handsome Irish face, but his eyes would darken as he said, " 'I thank you, but no.' 'Twould be bigamy, since Sheridan's mama is still alive in my heart."
The mention of
Sheridan's mama was the one thing that could dim the smile in his eyes, and
Sheridan always grew tense until he was himself again. For months after her mama and baby brother died from an illness called the flux, her papa behaved like a silent stranger, sitting beside the fire in their tiny cabin, drinking whiskey, ignoring the crops that were dying in the field and not bothering to plant more. He didn't talk, didn't shave, hardly ate, and seemed not to care whether their mule starved or not. Sheridan, who was six at the time and accustomed to helping her mama, tried to take over her mother's chores.
Her father seemed as unaware of
Sheridan's efforts as he was of her failures and her grief. Then one fateful day, she burned both her arm and the eggs she'd cooked for him. Trying not to cry from the pain in her arm or the pain in her heart, she had lugged the wash down to the stream along with what was left of the lye soap. As she knelt on the bank and gingerly lowered her father's flannel shirt into the water, scenes from the happy past at this same spot came back to haunt her. She remembered the way her mama used to hum as she did the wash here while
Sheridan supervised little Jamie's bath. She remembered the way Jamie used to sit in the water, gurgling happily, his chubby hands smacking the water in playful glee. Mama had loved to sing; she'd taught
Sheridan songs from
England and sung them with her while they worked. Sometimes she would stop singing and simply listen to
Sheridan, her head tipped to the side, a strange, proud smile on her face. Often she would wrap
Sheridan in a tight hug and say something wonderful, like, "Your voice is very sweet and very special—just like you are."
Memories of those idyllic days made
Sheridan's eyes ache as she knelt at the stream. The words of her mama's favorite song whispered in her mind, along with the memory of her mama smiling, first at Jamie as he giggled and splashed, and then at
Sheridan, who was usually getting soaked too. "
Sing something for us
," she would say. "
Sing for us, angel
…"
Sheridan
tried to obey the remembered request, but her voice broke and her eyes flooded with tears. With the heels of her hands, she rubbed the tears away only to discover that her father's shirt was now floating downstream, already out of her reach, and then
Sheridan lost the battle to be brave and grown-up. Drawing her knees against her chest, she buried her face in her mama's apron and sobbed with grief and terror. Surrounded by summer wildflowers and the scent of fresh grass, she rocked back and forth, crying until her throat ached and her words were only a croaking whispered chant. "Mama," she wept, "I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I miss Jamie. Please come back to Papa and me. Please come back, please come back. Oh, please. I can't do it alone, Mama. I can't do it. I can't, I can't—"
Her litany of grief was suddenly interrupted by her father's voice—not the dull, lifeless, terrifyingly unfamiliar voice he'd had for months, but his old voice—hoarse now with concern and love. Crouching beside her, he'd pulled her into his arms. "I can't do it alone either," he'd said, cradling her tightly against him. "But I'll wager we can do it together, sweeting."
Later, after he'd mopped her tears, he'd said, "How would you like to leave here and go travelling, just you and me? We'll make every day an adventure. I used to have great adventures. That's how I met your mama—I was having an adventure in
England, in Sherwyn's Glen. Someday, we'll go back to Sherwyn's Glen, you and me. Only not the way your mama and I left. This time, we'll go back in grand style."
Before
Sheridan's mama died, she'd talked nostalgically about the picturesque village in
England where she'd been born, about its beautiful countryside, its treelined lanes, and the dances she'd attended at the assembly rooms there. She'd even named
Sheridan after a particular kind of rose that bloomed at the parsonage, a special species of red rose that she said bloomed in gay profusion along the white fence surrounding the parsonage.
Sheridan
's father's preoccupation with returning to Sherwyn's Glen seemed to start after her mother's death. What puzzled Sheridan for a long while, however, was exactly
why
her papa wanted to go back there so badly, particularly when the most important man in the village seemed to be an evil, proud, monster of a man named Squire Faraday who lorded it over everyone and who would not make a good neighbor at all when her papa built his mansion right next to his home, which was his intention.
She knew her papa had first met Squire Faraday when he delivered a very valuable horse from
Ireland that the squire had purchased for his daughter, and she knew that since her father had no close family alive in
Ireland, he'd decided to stay on and work for the squire as a groom and horse trainer. But not until she was eleven years old did she discover that the wicked, coldhearted, hateful, arrogant Squire Faraday was actually her mama's own father!
She'd always wondered why her father had taken her mother away from her beloved village and then spirited her off to America, along with her mother's elder sister, who then settled in Richmond and refused to budge another inch. It had always seemed a little strange that the only thing they took with them, besides the clothing on their persons and a small sum of money, was a horse called Finish Line—a horse that her mama had loved enough to bring along and pay his passage, and yet one she had sold soon after they arrived in America.
The few times her parents had spoken of their departure from England, it had always seemed hasty somehow, and vaguely unhappy too, but she couldn't imagine why that would have been so. Unfortunately, her father was adamantly unwilling to satisfy her curiosity on that score, which left her with no choice except to rein in her curiosity and wait until they built their mansion in Sherwyn's Glen so that she could find out for herself. She planned to accomplish her goal by asking all sorts of carefully veiled questions once she got there. As far as she could tell, her father intended to accomplish his goal by gambling at cards and dice, with whatever money they could actually spare and as often as he found a good game of either underway. The fact that he simply wasn't lucky at cards and dice was apparent to both of them, but he believed all that would change someday. "All I need, darlin'," he would say with a grin, "is just one nice, long lucky streak at the right table. I've had a few of those in my time, and my time is comin' again. I can feel it."
Since he never lied to her, Sherry believed it too. And so they travelled together, talking to each other about subjects as mundane as the habits of ants and as grand as the creation of the universe. To some people, their vagabond lifestyle must have seemed strange. It had seemed that way at first to Sherry too, strange and frightening, but she soon came to love it. Before they'd left the farm, she'd truly thought the whole wide world looked exactly like their own little patch of meadow and that hardly anyone existed beyond its boundaries. Now there were new sights to see around every bend in the road and the happy expectation of meeting interesting people along their route who were heading in the same direction—travellers who were bound for, or en route from, places as distant and exotic as Mississippi, or Ohio, or even Mexico!
From them, she heard wondrous stories of far-off places, amazing customs, and strange ways of life. And because she treated everyone as her papa did—with friendliness, courtesy, and interest—many of them chose to match their pace to the Bromleighs' wagon for days at a time or even weeks. Along the way, Sheridan learned even more: Ezekiel and Mary, a Negro couple with skin like smooth shiny coal, springy black hair, and hesitant smiles told her about a place called Africa, where their names had been different. They taught her a strange, rhythmic chant that wasn't quite a song, yet it made her spirits heighten and quicken.
A year after Mary and Ezekiel went their own way, a white-haired Indian with skin as weathered and wrinkled as dried leather appeared around a bend in the road one gray winter day, mounted upon a beautiful spotted horse that was as young and energetic as his rider was old and weary. After considerable encouragement from Sheridan's father, he tied his horse to the back of the wagon, climbed aboard, and, in answer to Sheridan's inquiry, he said his name was Dog Lies Sleeping. That night, seated at their campfire, he responded to Sheridan's question about Indian songs by giving a strange demonstration of one, a demonstration that seemed to consist of guttural sounds accompanied by the beating of his palms on his knees. It sounded so odd and unmelodic that Sheridan had to bite back a smile for fear of hurting his feelings, and even then he seemed to sense her bewildered amusement. He broke off abruptly and narrowed his eyes. "Now," he said, in his abrupt, commanding voice, "
you
make song."
By then, Sheridan was as used to sitting around campfires and singing with strangers as she was speaking to them, and so she sang—an Irish song that her papa had taught her about a young man who lost his love. When she got to the part about the young man weeping in his heart for his beautiful lassie, Dog Lies Sleeping made a strangled noise in his throat that sounded like a snort and a laugh. A swift glance across the fire at his appalled expression proved her guess was correct, and this time it was Sheridan who broke off in mid-note.
"Weeping," the Indian informed her, in a lofty, superior tone while pointing his finger at her, "is for women."
"Oh," she said, chagrined. "I-I guess Irish men are, well, different because the song says they cry, and Papa taught it to me, and he's Irish." She looked for confirmation to her father and said hesitantly, "Men from the old country do cry, don't they, Papa?"
He shot her a laughing look as he dumped the dregs of his coffee onto the fire and said, "Well, now, darlin', what if I say they do, and Mr. Dog Lies Sleeping leaves us thinkin' for all time that Ireland's a sad place filled with sorry lads all weepin' their hearts out and wearin' them on their sleeves? That wouldn't be a good thing, would it? And yet, if I say they don't cry, then
you
might end up thinkin' the song and I lied, and that wouldn't be good, either." With a conspiratorial wink, he finished, "What if I say you misremembered the song, and it's really the
Italians
who cry?"