Meg frowned. “I have lost my memories. Not my wits.”
“I can see that. Do you ’pose you’ll be marryin’ him, then?”
“What?”
“The rich lord. Downstairs. Are you goin’ to marry him?”
“I—well, no.” She moved her plate back to the tray. A little too hard, perhaps, because the bedstand wobbled and the girl winced. “I am very tired now. Please, I should like to rest.”
“What about Mr. McGwen?”
“I do not wish to talk about it.”
“All the girls wished to marry him, you know.” Betsey stood, crossing her hands across her chest. “He was rightly a mystery to us all. Me and some other girls used to sneak down to the wharves early in the morn, when he’d first be settin’ to sea on his boat. He waited until he was out in the water before he took off his shirt. We could still see though.”
Meg turned her face away, his smell enfolding her as heat crawled beneath her face. “Did he … pay much mind to other girls?”
“When he first came. ’Till you.” Betsey leaned over to straighten Meg’s pillow. “It was always rightly a puzzlement, though. Why it should be you, when you scarcely ever wore a dress and ne’er did nothin’ to look pretty.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“On account of Mamma and Papa teachin’ me to be honest, o’ course. I just wanted to know how it was ’twix you and that lordy.” Tossing her braid over her shoulder, she glided from the bed to the door, almost with a dance to her step. She glanced back at Meg with a triumphant grin. “Me and the girls was just wantin’ to know.”
The next morn, Tom brought an all-too-eager Joanie—and Gyb—to the cottage. With her hair covered in a white handkerchief, she set to work scrubbing the windows and dusting the walls, while Tom hooked the rickety old door back on its hinges.
“Are we going to live here?” Joanie asked once as the kitten chased a baby mouse back into a wall hole.
Tom hadn’t responded.
He didn’t know the answer himself.
By the time the newly cleaned windows turned blue with dusk, Tom’s muscles ached and Joanie lay flat on her back before the empty hearth. Gyb curled on her stomach and the soft purring filled the room like a lullaby.
Tom hammered the last floorboard in place. He spread himself next to Joanie, hands behind his head, and sighed. “I could fish a week straight and not be so cursed sore.”
“You should have waited for Meade to fix the rafters.”
“Meade has better things to do.”
“He would help.”
“For ye, maybe.” Tom laughed, then reached for Gyb. “Here, let me see the wee thing.”
The kitten stretched on Tom’s chest, licked his paw, then settled down again to resume his nap. “Ye were braw help today, lass.”
“I was?”
“Aye. Ye work like Papa.”
“I like work. Mamm says it’s to the soul what rain is to the garden.”
He remembered. While Tom had always disappeared for as many chores as he could, Mamm had still possessed a longsuffering, nurturing look as she hauled him back, made him finish what he started, and reprimanded him with her wisdom.
Papa had not been so patient.
Especially after—
“How come you don’t never talk of them?” Joanie rolled her head to look at Tom. Her cheeks were dusty, her eyes tired, but she had the same look of Mamm. “You never say nothing about home.”
