Mary Brock Jones (34 page)

She shrugged. “Someone had to be. I loved my parents and I love my brother. It’s only natural I should look after them when they need it.”

John felt like shaking her. Or kissing her till she forgot all about duty, responsibility, anything but loving him with all the awe-inspiring depths of her heart. He could see in her eyes that she really did not understand his anger. Did she have no care for herself?

He stepped back from her and drew in a deep breath, noticing for the first time how she had drawn in on herself. He could almost see the wall she had built around her. He had done that.

“Has anyone ever given you a simple ‘thank you’ for all you do? No, don’t answer. You would only be lying to me, or to yourself. Just listen to me, for once.”

He crouched down, begging with his body for her to trust him. He took the hands she had clenched to her chest, gently smoothing the fisted fingers, coaxing them to open and then lay her palms in his.

“You know I love you. Don’t curl up like that. It’s not a threat. I love you, but whether you accept that love is your choice. God knows I want you to, but I will not force it on you–that I promise. You owe me nothing, do you hear?”

“We owe you so much,” she whispered, denying him. “You have been nothing but a friend ever since we arrived in these parts.”

Almost, John gave up. “Friend?” There was a ghost of a laugh, too bitter to be released. “Is that how you see me, all I am to you? When I would be so much more to you, do so much more for you?”

She tugged her hands back, and he was forced to release them. “You already have. All that I could ask for.”

“What little I have done was for my own satisfaction. I took one look at you and knew how precious you are; but you have no idea of your worth, of your beauty, your talent, your wisdom and your compassion. I but spread the word to men to aid you and keep you safe. It was little enough, and I’m not sure you even needed it. Your talents, your character and your devotion to your brother made your way for you.”

She clenched her hands together, twisting them in anxious circles, then looked up and took a deep breath. He waited, watching the tension mount inside her.

“But you make me feel safe,” she finally said.

Disappointment knifed through him. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it was not that.

“Safe.” He almost spat. “Is that all I am to you? Someone to keep you
safe
. I would slay dragons for you, give you diamonds and gold, make you the greatest lady in the land … but you only want to feel
safe.
Not loved, not cherished, not filled with passion and adored.” He did not know where the words came from. He had yearned after her so long and had begun to believe she felt something for him. To learn she saw him only as a friend, an ally, was more than he could bear right now.

“I’m sorry to have forced my attentions on you, Miss Ward. Please accept my apologies. I will trouble you no further.”

His words thrust her farther into herself. He could see her walls rising higher and higher and the tightness pinch her face. Right now, he was too hurt to do anything about it. He stood, and stepped back. She eased herself from the chair and hesitated, uncertain and, damn it, nervous. He found that, even now, he could not let her feel that.

“The Coopers need your help. You are welcome to stay with them as long as you need. And Jacques sends to ask that you resume your duties there, if you wish. Don’t worry, I will not force my presence on you any more than necessary. But if you have need of me, you have only to ask. I apologise if it burdens you, but I still could not bear it if you should come to harm due to any inaction on my part. You will still be safe, you have my promise.”

She nodded her thanks and turned away but then paused in the doorway and looked him full in the face. He wondered if she was aware of the single tear that tracked down her cheek.

“The people I love … they always leave. My parents did. Philip will, one day. I don’t know that I can stand to lose anyone else. And you should know something. You think to feel safe is nothing. To me, it is the most precious gift you could give me. I have never known it, you see. I have never felt safe before. What you have given me, it was all I have ever wanted in my life.”

Then she was gone.

The weather on the days following matched the bleakness in Nessa’s heart. The snow returned with a fury, blanketing the countryside in harshest white. Even with as many layers of clothing as she could pile on, her fingers stung with chilblains, and she never felt truly warm.

Ada said not a word about John, but Nessa felt her stare. Whether Ada had given up hope or was only biding her time, Nessa dare not think. She was just grateful she could avoid talking about him. As for John himself, it was only rarely she saw him, and that from a distance. Ada would send one of the children over with his supper at night, and each time they came back with the same message.

“My Reid says thanks, Ma, but he’ll take his dinner at his place tomorrow.”

Every night, Ada ignored his request completely and sent over a plate filled to the brim.

Then the snow hit, a smothering fury that trapped them for two days inside the cabin. Only Bob ventured out, tramping through the swirl of thickly falling flakes to check on the livestock. When he came back, she heard him talking to Ada.

“Mr John’s fine up there. He’s got stores aplenty.”

It sounded like the continuation of an old argument, but Nessa could demand no part in it. She could only pray and listen, worrying all the while over the big run holder’s safety while telling herself the man surely knew how to survive a winter such as this.

Her other worry she was too scared to voice, even to herself. On her brief forays outside, she could see the grey banks concealing the hilltops, telling of snow storms raging up there. John—Mr Reid—had told Philip what to do if the weather got bad at Campbell’s.

“Go south, that’s the best way,” he had said in his farewell to Philip before they left Campbell’s so many weeks ago. “Get down into the forested country on the Nevis side. You’ll be sheltered enough there, and Nessa will be safe with us until you can make your way back around to this side of the hills.”

In her saner moments, she was sure that is exactly what Philip must have done. He would be sitting, warm and dry, in a tavern somewhere. Probably telling tall stories and sitting in front of a fire bigger and warmer even that Ada’s constantly glowing hearth, with barely a thought to his big sister anxiously waiting for news of him.

That was in her saner moments. Too often, she looked at the hills and imagined him caught up there, victim of a brave and foolhardy attempt to rejoin her.

The weather lifted on the third day. The clouds still scowled over the hills but the snow had stopped falling, and the wind no longer thrashed the cabin with flails of iron. Ada was up at first light—cleaning, tidying, busily airing and resetting her small world to rights. To everyone’s relief, the children were allowed out again. Not even Ada minded that they raced through their chores before dragging a pair of flattened-out kerosene tins up the hill and wildly tobogganing back down.

“Where’s that mutton hock I salted down? Those bairns will need a good thick broth inside their bellies when they come inside. They’ll be as cold as Old Nick’s heart by the time they finish up that hill.” There was no anger in Ada’s voice. She stood on the porch, happily grinning at her freed offspring. The feeling was contagious. Nessa found herself breaking into fragments of long remembered songs as she helped Ada fill the big camp oven with the mutton pieces, barley and jars of preserved vegetables, before carting in a pile of snow and adding it to the mix coming to the boil over the hot fire.

“That’s aye a pretty tune.”

“My mother used to sing it. She learnt it from her maid in Greece.”

“I’ve heard that’s a fair hot country?”

Nessa nodded.

“Sing it again. It’s got a sound of summer in it. A good song for a cold winter’s day, I’m thinking,” said Ada.

For the rest of the morning, Nessa pushed away her troubles with hard work. As the weak sun filtered through the one, unshuttered window, Ada had them both scrub every surface in the cottage. Her arms were just about rubbed raw, but the smile returned to her face.

“Tell us of a warm place,” said Ada as they worked.

To her surprise, Nessa found herself speaking of her past travels: of a hot summer’s day in Greece and the smells of sun baking stone walls and of goats milling through the streets, of a vineyard in Italy, and the scorpion in Turkey that had nearly stung her. She told of old cities with broken columns of stone, of tiny villages and old women dressed in black, of her mother making an English drawing room out of one side of a cottage no bigger than this, and of her father poring over books far into the night. She chuckled at memories of Philip as a baby, following her everywhere and, as a schoolboy, ducking his lessons then gleefully arguing with scholars twice his age over the ancient remains that were his passion as much as his father’s.

“Though I’m beginning to wonder if it was the ancient civilisations of Rome and Greece that interested Philip, or did he more want to win our father’s attentions.”

“Aye, maybe,” agreed Ada. “A boy do need to know his father values him. You should hear Mr John talking of his Papa, saying his father would like this or that he’s done here. And my own boys, well, just a nod from Bob has them walking ten feet tall. Speaking of which, go and call that brood of mine in, will you dear. The soup’s about ready.”

Nessa grinned, leaving Ada to finish off the lunch and set the table. It would take some time to drag the children in from their game. She dusted down her hands on her apron, took it off and hung it by the door, then took a breath before she stepped out into the crisp, frost-filled air.

For a minute she forgot about the children, John, Philip, all her cares. The sun shone on a white world marked only by the lines made by the tramping feet of Bob and the children. She drank it all in, then remembered why she was here and scanned the paddocks for the young Cooper hellions. A shout to one side and she saw them, dark splotches against the white hillside where the track over the Old Man Range started. She waved and called them in, but the little darlings made no attempt to hurry. They ought to be hungry by now, she grumbled, not sure how long she could stand out here without freezing to the spot.

Then she counted the splotches. There were one too many. John? No, she told the sudden rising panic inside her. Too short, too skinny. Her heart slowed. Unable to wait any longer, she grabbed a pair of galoshes from the boot rack and ploughed into the snow.

After her third fall, she relented and slowed her pace. The children were halfway home when she came up with them, and they had a stranger with them: a man no older than Philip, but the cold had him caught fast, and his face had the same glazed look as Thomas’ on that awful day on the glacier.

“Who?”

“We found him,” piped up the youngest at the same time.

“Over by the horse barn.”

“He’s come from the other side.” The boys pointed up to the hilltops.

She did not want to frighten the children, but the stranger had little time. He was lucky to have made it this far. “Let’s get him inside,” she urged them. “Your mother has lunch ready and this poor man needs a warm fire before he answers any questions.”

She slipped her arm under the man’s shoulders, freeing the youngest ones and shooing them inside to their mother. His skin was icy to the touch and a fine tremor played a constant arpeggio through his body.

With the help of the two older boys, together they carried him into the cottage. Ada took one look and ordered him laid on the nearest pallet bed.

“Rub him all over,” she ordered Nessa as she dished up some soup and settled the children at the table. She put another pot of water on to boil and brought a bowl of soup over to the young man.

“We need to get some hot food into him; and help me move this cot nearer the fire.” She started stripping the wet clothes off him, taking him right down to his long johns. Nessa was too filled with Ada’s urgency to blush, and the boy reminded her too much of Philip. She almost cried when she felt the bony ribs poking through his chest. He was half starved.

They wrapped him in blankets, always rubbing, accompanying it with sips of soup. Finally, the shivering ceased but he began to drift between wakefulness and oblivion. Ada slapped him once, twice.

“Wake up, young man. Wake up and fight.”

The boy pulled back, resisting. She slapped him again.

“Ada!”

“We’ve got to keep him awake. Right now, if he falls asleep, he won’t wake again. Wake up, young man.”

She shook him and forced another spoon of broth into him. He spluttered, letting it dribble down his chin. Ada shoved another spoonful into his mouth, and this one he swallowed. His eyes fluttered open.

“Enough.” His voice was weak, but it was his voice, his will. Ada put the spoon down.

“Sit him up,” she ordered Nessa. “One more spoonful, boy, then I’ll stop.”

The young man obediently opened his mouth. Nessa let him swallow, then could wait no more.

“Where are you from?”

He jerked his head back. “From over the hills. The diggings.”

“Why? Why are you out in this?”

“No food,” he said, so quietly she had to lean forward to hear. He was drifting off again. This time it was Nessa who shook him.

“Tell me. What’s happened over there? Which camp are you from?”

“Campbell’s. But all the same.” The boy was trying so hard to string his words together, but Nessa had nothing in her soul with which to feel sympathy. Cold fear swamped her.

“What’s all the same?”

“No food. Packers can’t get through. Ran out of stores last week.”

“And the rest of the miners?”

He gulped, and looked as if he was forcing his eyes open. “Some went south, some came this way. Hell up there. Got lost. Only luck I found my way down.”

“My brother. Philip Ward. Do you know him?”

The boy nodded. “Yeah. He rationed us. Kept us alive. But … snow wouldn’t stop.”