“Nothing twists my stomach.”

  “That’s because you have what’s called an iron constitution, but it doesn’t mean that keeping things to yourself doesn’t show in other ways. You’ve been nothing short of hateful to Mr. Shepard today.”

  Clay ducked his head and mumbled a reply under his breath.

  “How’s that again, Clay? I couldn’t make out what you said.”

  He repeated himself, this time looking Roen in the eye. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been purely hateful.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?” she asked.

  “Change my ways, I reckon.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Say better what’s on my mind when I’m thinking it.” He turned to his mother. “Not like Lizzie. Not the way she blurts things out. I mean I could talk about what you said. The fire. Pa. What it was like when he was drinking and looking for a fight. How it was kinda peaceful when Sheriff Ben locked him up. It’s hard to say that, him being dead and all. Sometimes I forget and think he’s just in jail. I dream about him getting out and coming back.”

  “Oh, Clay.” Lily’s heart lodged in her throat. “Did you have that dream last night?”

  “No. Well, sort of. It’s muddled in my mind. It came to me and then I heard you scream so it was hard to tell the actual from the dream. Truth, it all seemed real.”

  Lily said, “Truth. When I saw you standing at my bedside, I thought you were your father.”

  Clay’s eyes, those eyes that were so like his father’s, opened owl-like in wonder. “You did?”

  “I did.”

  “Musta scared you.”

  “It did.”

  “You scared me, too, when you screamed that way.”

  “And you’ve heard it before,” she said. “Imagine how it must have frightened Roen.”

  “Did it?” Clay asked Roen. “Did it frighten you?”

  “Made the hair on my arms stand at attention.”

  Clay nodded. “Mine, too. I guess we got that in common.”

  “A lot more than that, I suspect.”

  “You think so?”

  “We both care about your mother.”

  “Yeah, but I love her.”

  Lily held her breath.

  Roen didn’t miss a beat. “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “You didn’t kiss her after. Hannah and me talked about it. There should have been kissing. There was when Sheriff Ben married the doc. We were there.”

  “Ah. So you have experience to draw on.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, the truth is I wanted to kiss your mother. She wasn’t comfortable with it.”

  “Probably because she’s skittish. I told you about that.”

  “You what?” Lily said. It was as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “I remember,” said Roen. “I figured that was it so I went along with her.”

  “Guess it’s good that you didn’t argue.” Clay’s eyes drifted to the stack of blankets under the table beside the rocker. “You gonna sleep down here again tonight?”

  “Clay!” Lily was mortified. “It is not your place to ask questions about where anyone chooses to sleep.”

  As deep red roses bloomed in Lily’s cheeks, Roen said, “It was my choice to sleep down here. I saw logs. You know what that means.”

  “You snore.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb your mother.”

  “You couldn’t. My pa snored so loud I could hear him when I got up to go to the privy. Ma slept right through it.”

  Roen gave Lily an arch look but spoke to Clay. “Oh, well, she didn’t mention that.”

  “He’s going to sleep upstairs tonight,” said Lily.

  Roen knew what that meant. He would get the bed, but his wife of about twenty-four hours was going to be sleeping on the sofa. Was that irony or just a cruel joke? Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Is that right, Da? You’ll be upstairs?”

  Hearing Clay call him Da, Roen decided then that he’d sleep on a bed of nails if that was what Lily set out for him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Roen sat at the kitchen table with his maps and notebook and drawings spread out in front of him. Lily was standing at the stove with her back to him as he’d first seen her in this kitchen. His maps, which usually fascinated him, were less interesting than the exposed nape of her neck as she bent her head forward to peer into the stockpot. Her rust-colored hair was fixed in a loose coil at the top of her head, and sometimes the untethered strands gleamed dark orange in the lamplight or curled damply from the heat of the simmering soup.

  “You need a better place to work,” she said without turning around. “Dinner will be ready soon, and you’ll have to move so Hannah can set the table.”

  “That’s not a problem. I don’t mind moving.”

  “You will when you have to do it for three meals a day.”

  “You have a point.” He pushed away from the table and stretched his back and arms. He extended his legs and rolled his neck. He’d been working as long on his project as she had been preparing the soup, and while he sat the entire time, she never sat once. He worked quietly. She hummed. He did calculations on paper. She chopped winter vegetables on a hardwood board. He checked measurements with a protractor and a compass. She checked portions with a scale.

  Lily put the lid back on the pot before she opened the oven door to look at her bread. Satisfied that the bread’s crust was browning nicely, she quickly closed the door and pressed a hand against her midriff when her stomach growled. Leaning back against the sink, she gave Roen a surreptitious glance to see if he noticed. He had. There was the remnant of a smile still on his lips.

  Vaguely embarrassed, Lily murmured an apology.

  “You were chopping vegetables,” he said, “when my stomach started growling. That was an hour ago. I would have had a cup of your beef stock if I hadn’t thought you’d take a cleaver to my hand.”

  “You should have told me you were that hungry. You saw the children come in and take jelly bread to tide them over.”

  “Hmm.” He pointed to the corner of one of the maps. “Fort Grape Jelly.”

  “Oh! Are those Lizzie’s fingerprints? Of course they are. You can’t let her near anything.”

  Roen put out a hand to stop her before she came at the map with a damp dishcloth. “Give it to me. I’ll do it.” He wrung out a few more drops of water before he touched it to the paper and gently wiped the purple stain. “There. Not so bad.”

  Lily took the cloth back and tossed it in the sink before she sighed heavily and sagged into a chair. “This is never going to work, Roen. You’re going to hate it here. Lizzie’s fingers are always sticky. Ham will get under your feet and bowl you over. I saw him on the stairs. He almost did. Hannah has the most ridiculous romantic notions. You said so your—”

  “I never said they were ridiculous.”

  “Well, they are, and you’ll tire of them. And Clay . . . he needs you too much, I think. This arrangement isn’t fair to either of you.”

  “Lily.” Roen reached for her hand. When she didn’t pull away, he wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed only enough to let her know he had her. “You were making soup. Now you’re making a mountain out of Fort Grape Jelly. It’s hard to keep up.”

  “This is who I am,” she said mournfully.

  “I like who you are.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Do you think I’m lying?”

  “No, but I give you leave to change your mind when you know me better.”

  “If that eases your conscience.”

  “It does.”

  “All right.” He released her hand and began collecting his work materials. “I told you that train wouldn’t arrive on schedule, didn’t I?”

  She nodded. “This is the third time you told me. Did you think I wasn’t paying attention?”

  Roen answered but with a great deal of hesitation. “I might have thought that.”

  “You probably shouldn’t admit it.”

  “So I’m learning.” He glimpsed her faint smile. It was all right, then. She was amused. “It occurred to me that Victorine’s imminent arrival might account for your apprehension.”

  “Well, it doesn’t because I heard you.”

  “Mm.”

  Lily got up and checked the bread again. This time she pulled the loaf pan out of the oven and set it on a cooling rack. “What are we going to do about a place for you to work?”

  “What’s in the room between here and the parlor? I’ve never seen inside. The door’s always closed.”

  “It’s where I do the ironing and cut out patterns. I keep the fabric that Mrs. Fish gives me in there along with items to mend and remnants for quilting. The door’s not locked; the children know better than to go in there. Look for yourself and see if it will do. I can rearrange my things, clear the table, and put the ironing board against the wall. You’ll need a chair, though. You could take one from the parlor.”

  “Let me look,” he said before Lily went on reorganizing in her head. If he let her—and he wasn’t sure he could stop her—she would have the room ready for him before it was time for bed. “If you don’t mind, I’ll put these materials in there now.” He rolled up the maps; slipped his compass, protractor, and pencils into a leather case; and closed the sketch pad and notebook. Carrying all of it under one arm, he went halfway down the hall and stopped at the closed door.

  “You might have to push your way in,” Lily called to him from the kitchen.

  She was right. The door met resistance before it was two-thirds of the way open. He shouldered his way in but stopped when he heard something fall. Whatever it was had a soft landing, and he hoped that meant no permanent damage had been done.

  A light suddenly appeared over his shoulder, illuminating the space, and he realized Lily had come up behind him with an oil lamp.

  “I forgot that you would need this,” she said, wiggling past him to get into the room. “You can see now that there’s a window. I keep the curtains closed when I’m not in here.” She skirted the table, the ironing board, and a hip-high stack of neatly folded material so she could reach the window. She drew back the curtains. Since it was already well after dusk, the moonlight was of marginal value at best. “Well, at least you can see the window is here. It might make sense to move the table here so you can take advantage of the sunlight when you’re here during the day.”

  Roen indicated the things under his arm and then pointed to the table. “May I?”

  “Yes, of course. Here. Let me move these patterns out of your way.” Lily cleared half the table for him by using one arm to sweep the muslin cutouts aside. “There. And here’s the lamp that stays in this room,” she said, removing it from the ironing board and setting on the table. She opened a drawer under the table, took out a matchbox, and handed it to Roen. “I have to go back to the soup, but you look around and decide if this will suit.” Lily waited until Roen struck the match and lighted the lamp before she returned to the kitchen.

  Roen watched her go. After a moment, he realized he was shaking his head and grinning rather stupidly at the same time. He sobered immediately, grateful she hadn’t been witness to it, and wondered if he was well on his way to becoming besotted.

  “Does Ma know you’re in here?”

  Roen gave a start at Hannah’s sudden appearance in the doorway. His hip bumped the table and the lamp’s flame flickered wildly. He steadied the table and the lamp and then moved a step away from both. “Does your mother know you sneak up on people?”

  “You jumped.”

  “You scared me.”

  As if that had been her intent all along, her response was a short burst of laughter. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Trying to decide if this will be a suitable place for me to work when I’m not out in the field.”

  Hannah set her hands on either side of the door frame and leaned in. She looked around with a critical eye. “I suppose if you move the material and notions to one side, there’s enough space for you on the other. Still, there’s a lot that’s particularly female about this room.”

  “Uh-huh. I noticed that right off.”

  She shrugged. “I like it.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” Aware that Hannah hadn’t moved from the doorway, Roen began a slow turn to examine every corner of the room. When he completed the circle, she was still there and still watching him closely. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what she was thinking, but he prompted her with an arched eyebrow anyway and she snapped at the bait.

  “Clay says that it was Ma who didn’t want to kiss after the ceremony.”

  Roen was deeply regretting encouraging her. “That’s right.”

  “But have you kissed her since?”

  “You need to stop reading Felicity Ravenwood adventures.”

  “So you haven’t.”

  “I’m thinking you are rather more inquisitive than is proper for a girl your age. Any age, actually.”

  “You really haven’t.”

  “Ask your mother.”

  “She won’t tell me.”

  “Neither will I.”

  Hannah screwed her mouth to one side as she considered this. “Ma says you’re sleeping upstairs tonight.”

  “Your mother didn’t tell you that. Clay did.”

  “Yes, but it’s true, isn’t it?” When Roen nodded, she went on. “I didn’t know you stayed down here until I saw the blankets in the morning and Clay told me about Ma’s nightmare. Lizzie and I slept through it. Sometimes we do that. It’s better for Lizzie that way. She doesn’t remember a lot of what was before.”

  “What was before?”

  Hannah dropped her braced arms to her sides and took a step backward into the hallway. There was nothing saucy about her reply. On the contrary, her expression was grave. “Ask my mother.”

  * * *

  • • •

  After dinner Roen went upstairs to help Lily put Lizzie and Ham to bed while Hannah and Clay washed dishes and tidied the kitchen. He read to Ham from Treasure Island. Sometimes he could hear Lizzie giggling from her room across the hall, but he was more attuned to Lily’s lilting voice than that of her daughter’s. Ham drifted off before Lizzie, but Roen waited until he heard Lily back out of the room and shut the door before he left Ham’s bedside. He met up with her in the hall.

  “You know, I’ve never read Treasure Island. I enjoyed it.”

  “This is the third time Clay’s taken it out of the library for him.”

  “Ah. That explains why he knew so much about the story. I think he could have read some of it to me. What did you read to Lizzie?”

  “Tales of Mother Goose.”

  “Yes. The classics.”

  She chuckled. “Why? Were you afraid it was Felicity Ravenwood?”

  “Mm, no. I’m fairly sure that’s what Hannah reads to her.”

  There was still a bubble of laughter on her lips as she indicated he should follow her to her bedroom. “I’ll help you move your instruments down to the workroom now that you’ve said it will do for you.” She pointed to where his tripod leaned unobtrusively in a corner. The black case with his surveying tools was beside it. “What would be better for me to carry?”

  “Neither. This is why I have an assistant.”

  She was skeptical. “Really?”

  He sighed. “No. You can take the case. The tripod is an ungainly armful.” Roen started toward it but stopped when he felt Lily tug on the sleeve of his jacket. He looked down at where she held him back with only the tips of her fingers. It only required him to give attention to her hold for her to jerk her hand away as if scalded. “You’ve changed your mind?”

  Lily shook her head. “I want to talk to you about tonight while two pair of ears are sleeping and the other two pair are downstairs.”

  “Of course. Should we sit?”

  “If you like, but this won’t take long.”

  “Then I’ll stand.” With his back to the wall. Preferably wearing a blindfold. He gave himself good marks for not inviting her to see through his expression to his thoughts.

  Lily folded her hands in front of her and took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation with Clay, specifically what I told him about you sleeping here tonight.”

  “You’ve changed your mind. I understand.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “That’s just it. I fully intend that you’ll sleep here.”

  “And you’ll take the sofa.”

  A vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. “No. That won’t do; I realize that now.”

  “Then we’ll both be here.” Roen tilted his head toward the bed. “There.”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “I was thinking we would flip a coin for the bed. The loser gets the floor. There are plenty of blankets. It won’t be uncomfortable for whoever that is.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes darted warily toward the floor. “Have you spent a night there?”

  “No.”

  “Then we should forgo the coin toss. I’ll take the floor. I have experience sleeping on the ground. This will be an improvement over doing it out of doors.”

  Lily’s eyes were apologetic. “I know it’s not an ideal arrangement.”

  Ideal? It was barely satisfactory. Again, Roen did not allow her to guess at what he was thinking. “It will work,” is what he said.

  “Thank you. I had no idea that Clay and Hannah had notions that would complicate the terms of our agreement.”

  “Truly? I seem to recollect mentioning that Hannah at least would expect there to be kissing.”

  “You did, and reminding me you told me so is not an attractive feature.”