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Caleb lay back on the pillows. She intrigued him. Certainly she was nothing like anyone he had ever known before. “Doesn’t Seth talk to you?” he called out.
She opened the door again. She had already put the bandages to soak in clean water and was drying her hands. “What?”
“I said, doesn’t Seth talk to you?”
“He talks to me when he has something to say. What sort of a question is that?”
“But does he talk just to hear what you think or feel?”
Megan laughed, then saw that he was serious. “Captain Morgan, we have a lot more work to do here in Black Hollow than you seem to realize. We don’t have time to stand around talking about nothing in particular. Who would wash the clothes and mend the fences and repair the shutters if we spent the day in conversation?”
“It seems to me Seth would want to know about your thoughts and feelings if he’s in love with you.”
“Seth loves me,” she said with a stubborn lift of her chin. “You don’t even know him. Why would you ask such a thing?”
“You don’t seem to be accustomed to talking to a man.”
“Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to talk to the enemy. Have you thought about that, Captain Morgan?” she retorted.
“Call me Caleb. It seems only right since I’m sleeping in your bed.” A thought suddenly struck him. “There is another bed, isn’t there? For you?”
“I’m quite comfortable in the back room on a pallet.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you had two bedrooms—with beds.”
Megan gave him an exasperated look. “Does this look like a palace to you? I have one good feather bed and you’re on it. When I have children and they grow old enough to need a bed, Mama and I will stuff another ticking. Until then, it would just go to waste.”
“Why didn’t you put me on the pallet instead of in here?”
“I guess I just didn’t have time to think about it. You were hurt so bad and this was the closest bed.”
“But you left me on it, even after I started getting better.”
“Captain Morgan...”
“Caleb.”
“If you want to sleep on the floor, I’d be glad to oblige. But right now, I have a wash to do and a fire to tend in the smokehouse. I can’t stand around here all day and do nothing but talk.” She turned and pulled the door firmly shut behind her.
Caleb sighed and opened The Mysteries of Udolpho. He started on the first page. The familiar words greeted him. His convalescence would be long if there was no one willing to talk to him. Until now he had never realized how much he enjoyed conversation. “On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony...” he began reading.
“Here are your things,” Megan said, holding out a handful of the objects Caleb had carried in his pocket. There was a pocket watch, the money left from his last paycheck, a locket. “She’s very pretty.” Megan had the grace to blush. “I looked inside. Normally I wouldn’t have pried, but under the circumstances...”
“If I can share your bed, you can examine the content of my pockets. I think she’s beautiful.”
“Is she your intended?”
“No, she’s my sister.”
Megan found herself smiling. “Your sister?”
“Her name is Felicity, but that’s a contradiction. She’s full of mischief. Since she’s the youngest, we’ve all spoiled her shamelessly.” His expression told Megan he loved his sister and didn’t regret the spoiling in the least.
Megan wondered what it would be like to be pampered. Also, this talk about brother and sister made her miss Owen a great deal.
“Were you spoiled as a child, Miss Llewellyn?”
“Certainly not. And you may call me Megan. After all, you gave me permission to call you by your first name so it’s only proper.”
“And after all, I’m sharing your bed.”
“Will you stop saying that?” She frowned at him in exasperation. It put too many ideas into her head. In the few days he had been here, she had started to find him far too interesting. “In the Hollow we don’t believe in spoiling children. It only leads to trouble later.”
“I don’t believe that it does. How can it hurt to love a child?” His gray eyes gazed into hers and she had the uncanny impression that he could see her thoughts.
She turned away. “I was loved. Just not spoiled.”
“I would think Seth would pamper you a great deal.”
Megan didn’t want to talk about Seth to Caleb. He always came off in a bad light. “I’ll remind him to do that as soon as he comes home again,” she said tersely.
“If you were my fiancée, I would treat you as if you were the most beautiful and the most cherished woman in the world.”
She looked at him in surprise.
Caleb looked away this time. “Sorry. I guess I overstepped the bounds. It’s none of my business how Seth or anyone else treats you.”
“That’s all right.” She was dismayed at the surge of warmth his words had caused. Had he been able to tell? She was afraid to meet his eyes. Reluctantly she came farther into the room. “Seth means well. He really does. I’m a plain person, Capt—Caleb. I’m not used to frills, nor was I brought up to want them. Seth is the sort of man I’ve known all my life. He’s like my father and my uncles and my cousins. He fits into my life. It’s not natural for men like Seth to pamper their women.”
“I think all women bloom when it’s obvious that they’re loved. I couldn’t love a woman and not treat her as if she were a fragile treasure.”
Megan laughed. “Fragile treasures don’t haul water from wells and hoe gardens. I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a woman like that. There aren’t any fine ladies in the Hollow.”
He smiled at her as if he disagreed with her. For a moment Megan wondered if he were trying to sweet-talk her in order to get her to free him. But that made no sense. He couldn’t walk as far as the road, let alone all the way to a Union camp. Besides, she had already told him she would return him to his people in exchange for Seth as soon as possible. No, she must have misunderstood him altogether.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Tell me about your sister. Does she like to sew?”
“Yes, but she prefers to read. Felicity has loved reading all her life. Even before she learned to make out words, she had me read her stories. Mama would have been appalled if she knew half of what we read. Felicity’s head was so filled with pirates and sunken treasures, she had trouble sleeping.”
Against her will, Megan was intrigued. She went to the straight-backed chair and picked up her darning. “Your parents didn’t object to her reading?”
“Of course not. They encouraged it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t see how that can be. I know Bridget and I are busy all day with chores and have been ever since I can remember. Mama would never have the time to sit down and read. Neither would Papa, for that matter. How is it that your family has all this spare time?” She expertly dropped the darning egg into the sock and started making the tiny stitches to repair the heel.
“I suppose we just live differently.”
“I suppose. Do you live in a city?”
“Yes. Pollard’s Crossing isn’t as large as, say, Chicago by any means, but it’s still a city.”
“You’ve seen Chicago?” Megan’s fingers stopped momentarily.
“Several times. Have you?”
“No,” she said with a laugh at the idea. “I’ve never been beyond Raintree.” She glanced at him to see if that lowered her in his estimation. He was only looking at the locket he still held in his hand.
“I think you and Felicity would be friends.”
“We have so much in common,” she said wryly.
“Actually you do. She loves Mrs. Radcliffe’s books above all else. She can even quote complete passages from Udolpho.”
“How old is she?”
“Nineteen.”
“We’re almost the same age.”
“I thought you must be.”
“I’m quite close to my sister, Bridget. She doesn’t like to read but she knows I do and she’s helped me hide my books from time to time. She can read,” Megan added quickly, “but she prefers not to.”
“Does she have red hair, too?” he asked with a smile.
Megan automatically reached up and touched her hair. Red hair wasn’t considered a beauty trait in the Hollow. “Yes. Hers is even more red than mine. We get it from Mama.”
“And does Owen also have red hair?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve told you I’m not supposed to talk about him. He’s dead to the family. But his hair is the same color as mine. Dark red.”
“Auburn,” Caleb said. “That’s what I’d call it. It’s beautiful.”
“You shouldn’t say such personal things. We’re stuck here together until you get well. I can’t allow you to be so intimate.”
“We’re only talking about your brother’s and sister’s hair coloring. That’s not too intimate, surely.” He sounded innocent but she caught the teasing sparkle in his eyes. If she were a different person in a different place, she would think he was actually flirting with her.
“Are you forgetting I’m promised to Seth?”
“Not for a single minute.”
She laid her darning in her lap and looked at him. “You confuse me. You’re not like any man I know. Not at all.”
“Yes, I’m certain that’s true. In my family we don’t believe in working a woman from sunup to sundown.”
With a frown she said, “That’s not fair. You don’t know my family or what we’re like.”
“That’s true. I apologize.” But he was smiling as if he were enjoying teasing her.
Megan put her darning back into her workbasket. “I have other chores to do while it’s daylight. You’ll have to amuse yourself. Memorize Udolpho while I’m gone.”
He opened it to the back. “All seven hundred pages?” he asked with a grin.
“I have a lot of chores. You’ll have time.” She left him and went into the other room.
For a minute she leaned against the wall, feeling its bumpy sturdiness and trying to remember who she was and, more important, who he was. This was her enemy. She couldn’t indulge in a flirtation with him even if she wasn’t engaged to Seth. She felt unfaithful as it was. What had she been thinking of to sit in the bedroom with him and do her needlework, just as if he were a family member? Megan pressed her fingers to her forehead and closed her eyes. After this she would be more careful.
She went out onto the porch. A cold wind had blown in the night before and the air had a snap of winter in it. She pulled her knitted shawl closer about her shoulders. There was kindling to chop and corn to be shelled. A shutter had worked loose during the night’s wind and she tried to put it back into place. It dropped at an angle again. She would have to go out to the shed beside the smokehouse and find a hammer and one of the square nails Patrick made for the settlement. It was hard for one person to keep up a house.
She frowned at the window set in the bedroom wall. How had she believed even for a moment that Caleb’s womenfolk had time to sit around and read? Even in a city there must be shutters to mend and fire to be fed and corn to be shelled. These things didn’t tend to themselves. He must have been teasing, thinking she was as green as grass in the spring. With an angry movement, Megan knotted her shawl more securely and went down the steps.
The woodpile was at the side of the house nearest the settlement. She bent and put a pine log on the large stump she used as a chopping block. With her hatchet, she slivered the pine into long splinters that would easily catch fire and ignite the heavy oak logs in the fireplace. The pine was from an old tree that had been felled during a storm the winter before and had rotted to the point of exposing its core. Heart of pine was the best kindling to be found.
As she chopped, she noticed a flash of yellow coming through the woods and looked up to see Bridget crossing the clearing. Megan waved to keep her sister from going into the house. Bridget veered to join her.
“Mama wants to know if you need any of the meat we’re smoking? She put by a sizable amount and you can have some if you want it.”
“No, but tell her I appreciate the offer. I brought up all my smokehouse can hold so I have plenty to see me through the winter. Assuming the soldiers don’t find it.”
Bridget nodded. “I can’t help but think of Patrick when I see them passing. Our boys look so hungry and so poorly clothed. It’s all I can do not to send them off with all our food and extra wraps. Patrick must look just like them.”
“I know. I share stew with them whenever I can. But we don’t know that all the states are like this. Maybe in Georgia things are better. News never reaches us until it’s old. Patrick may have plenty to eat and warm clothes as well.” They both knew this wasn’t the case, but Bridget needed to hear it.
“This is true. I pray for him every night. Maybe some Confederate mother or sister is taking care of him for me.”
“I’m sure that’s true.”
“We’ve hidden our smoked meat. Have you done that? If you haven’t, Papa says he’ll come over tomorrow and help you.”
“I’m doing it today. I wanted to smoke it as long as possible.” Megan stacked the irregular sticks of kindling in the box she stored them in. “It’s so different from curing hogs. I hope it tastes all right. There was no time to let it age in salt. I just rubbed it with black pepper and borax to keep the skippers out and hung it up.”
“So did we. It might be tough, but we can boil it tender, I guess. Nobody ever handed down a recipe for horse meat that I know of.”
“I sure never thought I’d be reduced to eating a horse.” Megan picked up the kindling box and paused. She couldn’t take it into the house and risk Bridget finding Caleb. Bridget would try to keep the secret, but her mouth sometimes out-raced her mind. Megan put the box back down on the ground and started splitting more kindling.
“How much kindling do you need?” Bridget asked.
“If I don’t do it now, I’ll just have to do it later. Kindling will keep.”
“I almost forgot. Papa said he saw a Union patrol down the mountain yesterday. He says for you to be real careful. They may be coming this way.”
“I’ll watch out for them.” Megan wondered if they could be looking for Caleb. By now he would have been missed and someone might have a way of knowing he wasn’t captured or buried.
“I’ve got to be going now. Mama says she’ll be expecting you for dinner on Sunday.”
“I always eat there on Sunday. Why would she have you remind me?”
