скачать книгу бесплатно
She nodded by way of greeting. “Brought you some loam.”
He frowned. “Loom?” He repeated the word the way she’d pronounced it.
“Topsoil. And dry manure,” she added.
“Oh.” Was this supposed to mean something to him?
The way she waited, just staring at him, made him conscious of his appearance. His fingers touched the collar of his shirt, and he realized the top buttons were undone.
She shifted in her boots. “I’ll bring the seedlings ’round as soon as we work in the loam. Thought you’d want to get started early with the planting.”
He finally nodded in understanding, remembering her offer of seedlings. Somehow it had slipped his mind amidst the backbreaking labor of the last two days.
“And so I do.” He yawned. “Excuse me. I didn’t get to sleep until late.” When she said nothing, he asked, “What time is it anyway?”
He saw her blink at his question. She was younger than he’d imagined. In her men’s getup and her clipped sentences, she had seemed ageless to him.
Not waiting for her to answer, he pulled out his watch. “Eight o’clock. It feels more like daybreak.” He looked at her questioningly. “Don’t you have your own work to do? I don’t want to keep you from it.”
She shook her head. “Already weeded and watered this mornin’.”
He nodded. “Of course.” If her speech was anything to go by, she wasn’t a person to waste time. “I suppose if I am to accept your generous gift, I should at least know your name. You seem to know mine.”
All he understood of the mumbled words was “Neeva Patterson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Patterson.” He took a last swallow of coffee. “Well, let’s be at it, then.”
He followed her out into the yard. The morning was still cool and he shivered slightly in his thin shirt. She marched ahead of him, straight toward the garden patch. Once there, she looked it over like a general reviewing his troops.
She turned to him. “What made you decide to turn your hand to gardening?”
“Sheer boredom.”
As if finding no response to that, she pointed to the wheelbarrow. “We’ve got to spread this over the garden and then use the fork to dig it in deep. I’ll empty it out and go bring some more. You’ll need to cover the garden good.”
As she reached for the handles of the barrow, Caleb came alive, realizing she’d meant what she’d said the other day about helping him. He got to the handles first and flipped the contraption over.
Then he turned toward the barn. “I’ll go get the shovel and fork,” he said over his shoulder.
It was after noon before Geneva judged the soil ready for planting. She stood back from where she had been working the manure into the soil with her fork. “Reckon we can rake it smooth now.”
The captain stopped his work at once, and she wondered whether he was as glad of the respite as she.
She hadn’t liked his pallor this morning. She’d kept telling herself it came only from lack of sleep, but being out in the sunshine hadn’t improved it. Now his paleness was overlaid with a sheen of perspiration.
The noonday sun burned down on their backs. They’d spent the morning carting manure and compost from her yard and forking it into his newly tilled garden. The captain hadn’t even stopped to drink a dipper of water. The back of his shirt was wet, and every so often he’d stop to swat at the blackflies that hovered around him in a cloud and remove his hat to wipe his brow with a handkerchief, or just straighten up, as if his back pained him.
He worked steadily, almost as if he was trying to prove something, but she couldn’t fathom what a gentleman like himself wanted to prove by bending over a garden patch.
Whatever the reason, she admired him for it. He had grit. Not like her pa, who’d bullied her ma all the time she was alive, but when she was gone, he’d just given up. Not all at once, but gradually, taking to the bottle until he was no longer fit to carry out the logging work that was his livelihood. One day they’d carried his body home after he’d slipped from a log into the rushing river on a spring log drive….
Geneva shook away the memories and sneaked another peek at the captain. She bit her lip to keep from voicing her concern. She’d had long years of practice keeping silent. The captain had made it clear this morning that he was not interested in chitchat.
Her own throat felt parched and her belly empty. She leaned against her rake. “I think we oughtta quit for dinner.” Before he could refuse, she added, “We can plant the seeds this afternoon, but it’s not a good idea to plant the seedlings in full sun. Best thing is to set them tomorrow morning, early.”
He considered a moment, looking over the neatly tilled plot. Finally he gave a short nod, and Geneva breathed her relief.
She gave a doubtful look at the seedlings. “I don’t like setting everything out all at once, but guess it can’t be helped, it being so late for your first planting.”
“What do you mean?”
“All your stem vegetables should be planted when there’s a moon, and all the root crops, ’cluding your taters, when it’s dark.”
He gave the little plants, which were already beginning to droop, an uninterested look. “I don’t think it’ll make much difference to these plants one way or another. They should be grateful just to be planted.” He gave one of the pots a kick.
Instead of showing outrage, Geneva smiled. The contrast between the sweat-stained man before her and the polished gentleman who’d helped her on the wharf was too great.
He caught her smiling at him and frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” She pinched her lips together. “I’m just glad those seedlings are hardy things.”
He looked at her for a second without reacting, then slowly he smiled. Her own lips relaxed in answer. Suddenly she felt like his partner in the garden.
“You’ve helped me more than I had any right to expect,” he said. “The least I can do is offer you some dinner.”
She stared at him, too startled by his invitation to answer.
“What’s the matter? Have I offended you?”
She shook her head. How could she explain it to him? To eat at someone’s table was truly to be accepted as his equal. He didn’t know what he was offering. Captain Caleb Phelps III, son of a Boston shipping magnate, dining with Salt Fish Ginny, pariah of Haven’s End? No, she’d spare him the humiliation. He was suffering enough at the hands of the villagers with his own troubles. She wouldn’t add to them.
With a heavy heart she said, “Much obliged, Cap’n, but I better be getting back. Got to feed Jake.”
“Jake?”
“My dog,” she added.
“Certainly. Well, perhaps another time.” He began picking up the tools, as if the invitation was already forgotten.
She hurried to help him, dumping the smaller items into the wheelbarrow. “I’ll just keep my things in your barn, if you don’t mind. That’ll save hauling everything back tomorrow.”
“You won’t need them yourself?”
She shook her head. “Not for a couple of days, anyhow.”
He pushed the wheelbarrow while she carried the long-handled implements toward the open barn door. He showed her a space inside where she could set the things, then went back to the garden for the remaining tools. Geneva took a turn about the barn while she waited for his return. She wanted to thank him again for the invitation.
She shook her head. No one in Haven’s End had ever invited her to eat. Even when her ma died, and then her pa, her nearest neighbor had brought a few covered dishes, but no one had invited her over.
They’d tried to force her to the Poor Farm when she’d been left with no living relatives, but she’d had none of that. She’d fended off the town do-gooders with the help of her pa’s rifle and hounds. Since then, she’d been pretty much left to herself.
Geneva kicked at the wisps of hay on the wooden floor, trying to understand how Captain Caleb could treat her the same as he would one of his own world.
She reached the doorway leading to the shed that connected the barn to the house. There in the dim corridor sat a wooden crate. Its yellow slats of new wood made it stand out.
Geneva stepped back when she saw what it contained.
The crate was filled with empty bottles, stacked every which way, right side up, upside down, sideways. The sickly sweet smell of liquor reached her nostrils. She knew that odor well. It had lingered for months in her own one-room house after her pa died. Geneva held her stomach, feeling as sick as if she’d drunk the contents herself.
Chapter Two
Caleb swung the scythe back and forth across the lawn at the side of the house. It had taken him the whole morning to learn to wield it properly, but now he began to see some progress on the grass that reached his knees and gave the house a derelict appearance. Just like its owner, his mind echoed. He glanced down at his work clothes—denim trousers and rough cotton shirt, its sleeves rolled up on his forearms, revealing the undervest beneath—what would his father say of him now?
Nothing that he hadn’t heard his whole life.
Caleb abandoned that line of thought and concentrated on his strokes. He hadn’t had such a workout since he’d climbed the ratlines of a ship. He turned to look with pleasure at the swath behind him, ignoring for the moment the much larger portion that remained to be cut.
Just then, he saw his neighbor coming down the road toward his property. Caleb wiped his brow with his bandanna, wondering what the strange Miss Patterson was coming to see him about now. He hadn’t spoken to her in over a week. Occasionally he’d glimpsed her at her tasks, up beyond the field and trees that separated their two properties or out on her boat, but she’d made no more silent ventures into his territory since the day she’d helped him prepare the soil for planting.
The two of them had worked hard that day. Caleb chuckled, remembering how he’d felt when she first appeared at his door. He’d about forgotten her promise of seedlings.
Working in a field in the full sun was not a remedy he’d recommend to anyone after the amount of alcohol he’d consumed the evening before. But he didn’t let on about his physical condition, though he suspected her sharp black eyes didn’t miss much.
He watched his neighbor open his gate now and wondered what sage advice Miss Patterson was going to offer him on this occasion. At least he knew her name properly. He’d found out the last time he’d been to the village.
She was making her way toward him with her purposeful stride. Did she ever wander aimlessly?
She’d probably take one look at his garden and make a dour prophecy of doom. At least the seedlings had survived his inexperienced planting; several rows of seeds and the quartered potatoes with their eyes had sprouted as well. Except for that one row of beans, everything had looked promising to him this morning. Now he wasn’t so sure. His plants began to take on a thin and sparse appearance as he tried to picture them through Miss Patterson’s experienced eyes.
“Morning.” She wasted no excess words in greeting.
Caleb leaned against the scythe and touched his hand to his hat brim. “Good morning to you, Miss Patterson.” She gave him a sharp glance, as if his words held some double meaning. He returned her look blandly. “What can I do for you?”
“Came to see how the seedlings were doing.”
“Just getting around to worrying about their fate?”
She flushed at that and looked away from him. “I been busy. Couldn’t make it back the other day.”
“You were under no obligation. I am grateful enough for all your help.”
“Still, it wasn’t right. I should’a finished what I begun.”
“Shall we have a look?” He invited her to go before him with a gesture of his hand.
Giving an abrupt nod, she turned and led the way to his garden, saying along the way, “You can set out seeds every week for another couple o’ weeks. That’ll give you crops right through the summer and into the first frost.”
When she got to the plot, she walked the length of it, silently inspecting the inch-high rows of peas, the tiny pairs of leaves on the sprouted radish and beet seeds, the feathery carrot tops, the pale gray-green of the cabbage and turnip sprouts. She nodded at the taller seedlings she’d given him to transplant from her own supply, which showed a few new leaves. Caleb hadn’t felt so nervous since holding out his slate for his tutor’s scrutiny.
“You water ’em when they’re dry?”
“Yes, miss.”
She gave him another glance, then bent down to pull out a thin weed Caleb could have sworn hadn’t been there that morning. “Hoe around the bigger plants after it rains?”
“I will now.”
Then she came to the pole beans. She squatted down beside them and took one little stem between her thumb and forefinger. It was thick and green, but where its two first leaves should have been was a shriveled, brown stump. Before Caleb could offer any explanation, any denial that he’d treated these seeds with any less care than the others, she pronounced her verdict.
“Cutworms.”
The word conjured up an image of a pair of shears going through all his rows, hacking the tender plants to shreds.
“We’ll have to replant ’em. This time we’ll sprinkle some wood ashes all along the rows. If that don’t do it, I’ll mix up a mess of cornmeal and molasses. That should keep ’em off. Lucky they haven’t gotten to your other plants.” She stood once more, thrusting her hands into her back pockets. “Everything else is coming up fine. You did a good job planting,” she acknowledged.
She didn’t give him much chance to enjoy the sense of victory that filled him.
“If you notice anything else eating the leaves, let me know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered automatically.
Again she narrowed her eyes at him, as if suspicious of his tone. When she didn’t say anything more, Caleb tried to think of something to add. For some reason, he didn’t want her to leave just yet. Up to now, he’d avoided all company.
But he was intrigued. Perhaps it was because she seemed as content to leave him alone as he was to be left alone. Or perhaps it was the fact that she’d defended him that day in the store.
He still wanted to know why.
When she started walking away from the garden patch, he spoke up. “I’m thinking of buying a boat. Know anything of Winslow’s Shipyard?”
She nodded. “Don’t think much of old man Winslow, but young Silas’ll build you a good craft. He’s got a gift.”
“A gift?”
“It’s in his hands.” She looked briefly down at her own dirt-stained ones. “Anything he builds is light, easy to handle, seaworthy. He won’t charge you much for a small vessel. What are you looking at?”
“Nothing too big. Something I can handle myself. I noticed your little craft. She serves you well. Where do you take her?”
He couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or not by the compliment. “Up and down the coast. She’s just a double-ender, but that’s all I need.” She nodded. “Silas built her for me. In his spare time.” She made a sound of disgust. “Winslow wouldn’t let him waste his time on a little peapod for the likes o’ me. Farmers usually build their own. Folks use ’em for fishing and some lobstering.”
“I’ll have to see him. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him, although Phelps Shipping has commissioned the Winslow Yard for schooners.”
“Silas has been with Winslow for a long time. Ever since he was a boy. Apprenticed with him. He isn’t from these parts. Comes from one of the islands—Swans or Frenchboro.”
Another pause. Silence filled the space between them like a physical presence. Caleb still didn’t want her to leave. Maybe it was just boredom. He felt as if he had all the time in the world on his hands.
“You wouldn’t have any extra seeds?” he asked on impulse.
“Seeds? Oh, sure, I’ll see what I have.”
