The Caged Graves (12 page)

She could see quite plainly that he didn't. He bent over her, and, uncertainly, she put her arms around his neck. He slipped one hand under her knees and the other around her back and hefted her into his arms.

Hadley Jones was not as tall or as broad-shouldered as Nate, but she could feel the strength of his arms as he tested her weight and shifted her so that she was cradled against his chest. Then he started up the hill without another word.

Verity had never been so close to a man in her life. Jones was overwarm and sweaty, but so was she, and somehow it wasn't unpleasant. She could feel his heart beating and hear his increasingly labored breaths as he climbed the hill. Her head was so close to his that she kept bumping his hat. The third time she almost knocked it off, he said, “Just take it and shove it into my haversack.”

She removed his hat, leaned over his shoulder, and reached down until she could grab the strap of the bag and pull it closer. As she fumbled the bag open and folded the hat inside, her upper body was entirely pressed against his. By the time she let go of the sack, her heart was beating as fast as his—for no good reason at all.

When they finally reached the road, he set her down on a fallen log and bent over, his hands on his knees. “Let me catch my breath,” he gasped. She nodded guiltily. He grinned and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “It's not you, of course. It was the climb.
You
weigh less than a feather.”

Verity smiled wryly. Catching a whiff of sweet fragrance, she looked up and saw another of those flowering shrubs above her, the petals nearly dripping in nectar. She plucked a bunch of flowers and brought it down to her lips.

“Miss Boone! Don't!” Hadley Jones snatched the flowers out of her hand. “That's mountain laurel!”

She was taken aback. “It smelled like honeysuckle.”

“Well, it's not. It's poisonous.” A look of alarm passed over his face. “Did you eat any of this nectar earlier?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn't. I—” She gasped in understanding and stared up at the doctor. “I was about to—right before that man jumped out of the woods and grabbed my arm.”

“Right before—” Jones made a sound of exasperation and looked out at the swampland below them. “He grabbed your arm and stopped you from eating it.”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“And you—”

“Hit him on the head with my basket and ran away,” she finished glumly.

Her companion gave a short bark of laughter. “This isn't the eighteenth century, Miss Boone, and the Indians here don't make war on the white settlers anymore. You just met one of the Pooles,” he said. “They hunt and fish in these woods. You probably scared him half to death.”

“It was mutual.” Verity cringed with embarrassment. Yes, the man had startled her, but she'd run screaming from the sight of him like a half-witted female in one of those dime novels Polly Gaines liked so much. Verity had taken offense when her uncle belittled the Pooles, but she'd behaved no better today. She hung her head in shame.

Hadley Jones looked at the flowers in his hand and then shook them in her face. “You can't eat things when you don't know what they are. Didn't anybody teach you that?” She glared at him, but she knew he was right. “It would have made you very sick at best,” he went on, flinging the flowers to the ground. “At worst—well, that doesn't bear thinking about.”

Suddenly he sat down beside her and took her hand.

And although she knew it was imprudent, she let him. Her hands were trembling with reaction, and his grip was strong and comforting.

After a long moment of silence, Jones uncurled his fingers and looked down at her ring, as Nate had. Then he looked up at her, and she winced at the beseeching expression in his eyes.

“You're really going through with this . . . business arrangement?” he asked.

“It's not business,” she whispered.

“I think it is. It's a land deal.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “That's an unkind thing to say.”

He frowned. “Seeing this ring on your finger makes me feel unkind, Verity.”

“Don't,” she murmured. How had they come to the point of first names? She barely knew him. Why was she sitting here, letting him hold her hand?

She couldn't take her eyes from his face—the light spattering of freckles across his nose, his fair blue eyes. “I don't want you to do it,” he said.

“It's none of your business.” She pulled her hand free.

“All right.
As your doctor,
I don't think you should do it.”

“You're not my doctor.”

“Huh,” he grunted. “If you're going to live in Catawissa, then I
will be
your doctor. Trust me, you don't want Dr. Robbins.” He raised his hands in the air and made them tremble.

“Palsy?” asked Verity.

“That's right,” he agreed. “The kind you get from drinking whisky before noon.” He stood up. “Let's get you home.”

When he reached for her, she leaned away, shaking her head. “I don't think you should carry me anymore.”

“I won't say anything else personal. I promise.”

Verity kept her hands on the log and her face turned away. “The minister's house is just a little way up the road. Can't you please go and bring help back?”

“I'd have to leave you alone.”

“You said it yourself—my ‘Indian attacker' was just some fisherman trying to save an empty-headed city girl from poisoning herself.” She refused to meet his eyes, staring steadfastly at the road. “I'm perfectly safe. Humiliated, but safe.”

He stood there a moment, but she would not look up at him. Finally he opened his haversack, removed his hat, slapped it against his knee to reshape it, then put it on his head and started up the road.

 

Reverend White immediately brought his horse and carriage to her aid. Within half an hour she was sitting in the Whites' parlor with her foot propped up and a glass of iced tea in her hand, glaring at Hadley Jones, who'd just asked her to remove her stocking.

“Your ankle is swelling,” he said, sipping his own iced tea and regarding her with professional detachment.

“It's all right, dear,” said Mrs. White, setting down a bowl of water chilled with chips of ice. “Our apprentice is shaping up to be an excellent physician.”

Explaining why she didn't want to bare her ankle for him would have been embarrassing. The men turned their backs, and she reluctantly freed her stocking from her garter and rolled it down. Mrs. White and Hadley Jones together bathed her ankle in cold water, while Verity sat back in her chair and pretended she didn't know when it was
his
hands on her bare skin.

Meanwhile, Reverend White fretted. “You can't wander around in the Shades, Miss Boone,” he said. “That place has claimed many lives over the centuries. It's not a safe place for a young lady to gather flowers, if that's what you were doing.”

“Were you lost, my dear?” asked his wife.

“No. I
was
gathering plants—for grave wreaths.” Verity turned her gaze on the minister. “Reverend White, have you given any thought to my request?”

He mumbled something inaudible and refused to meet her eyes. “What request?” Mrs. White asked, looking back and forth between them.

Perhaps the wife would be more decisive than the husband. “I want the cemetery wall moved to enclose the graves outside,” Verity said. Mrs. White's eyebrows shot up, and she turned to look at her husband.

Jones wrapped a cool cloth around Verity's ankle. “Are we talking about the two caged graves?”

“Oh, we don't like to call them cages,” whispered Mrs. White.

“No one's ever been able to tell me what purpose they serve,” Jones went on.

The minister and his wife shared another glance.

“Protection against grave robbers,” Verity said.

Mrs. White gave a little gasp, and the minister murmured in alarm, shoving his hands into his pockets. Jones looked up and met Verity's eyes for the first time since he'd spoken his mind by the side of the road. “Are you serious?” he asked. “What—were they buried with the family jewels?”

“We're talking about my mother and my aunt,” Verity said tersely. “And getting them a proper, dignified burial.”

Mrs. White wrung another cloth over the bowl and avoided meeting Verity's eyes. “Miss Boone, you don't want to stir up old trouble. Everyone's accustomed to those graves where they are, and trying to make changes will only resurrect the old stories.”

“What stories?” Verity demanded.

“Nothing you want to hear, my dear.”

Verity didn't like being told what she did or did not want. “Perhaps I do.”

“Trust me; you don't.” The minister's wife handed Jones the fresh cloth and leaned forward to whisper to Verity: “There was talk of
witchcraft
and other, nastier things. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. I'm sure you can make a very happy future with Nathaniel McClure, if you'll just leave well enough alone.”

Hadley Jones slapped a discarded cloth into the bowl, splashing water everywhere and letting Verity know exactly what he thought of that future. But her mind was elsewhere.

Well enough
did not describe the manner in which her mother had been buried, and she did not intend to leave it alone.

VERITY'S BASKET turned up outside the kitchen door the next morning. It had been refilled with the vines that had spilled out when she threw it, although her knife was missing.

“Do you know anything about this, Beulah?” she asked.

“No, miss.” The housekeeper seemed almost cheerful now that Verity's mobility had been reduced, along with her ability to wreak havoc in the kitchen.

“I have reason to believe it might be one of your relatives who returned it.”

Beulah's eyebrows rose. “You mean a Poole?” She went back to washing dishes. “I have a lot of kin,” she said. “And I don't know what they're all up to at any given time—any more than you do.”

With a shrug, Verity put the mystery of the basket aside. There were more worrisome things on her mind: the caged graves, the treasure, stories of witchcraft and nastier things—although what could be nastier than witchcraft she had no idea.

And since no one worth believing wanted to tell her the truth, she was left with only one source of information—her mother's diary. She wondered if she could find anything of significance amid things like:

 

Oct 25 – Loaned dress patterns to Miss Piper.

Nov 6 – Verity skinned her knee playing with the McClure children.

 

There was only one diary entry Verity thought might be important. On October 30, her mother wrote:

 

Went to Mrs. Needham's house for a sewing bee but did not stay. They kept talking about what happened at the cemetery last August, and I cannot abide it.

 

That was interesting, but not nearly informative enough.

As she searched for something to explain the accusations made against her mother, she got closer and closer to the end of Sarah Ann Boone's life.

 

Nov 8 – Mrs. Cahill was by today and brought cabbage juice. Could not keep it down.

Nov 9 – Ransloe held my head while I puked today. I was not sick for this long carrying Verity. Everybody says it must be a boy this time.

Nov 10 – Asenath has it bad too.

 

And then there were the last entries in the diary. Her mother must have been very sick when she wrote her final lines, and Verity did not turn the page to look at them again.

 

When Nate arrived that afternoon, he found her sitting in the dining room with her foot wrapped and propped on a neighboring chair. Vines and ribbons covered the table, and the kitten was batting his paw at anything that dangled over the edge and then fleeing if the item bounced back.

Nate carried a basket of fresh strawberries in one hand and a small bouquet of flowers in the other. “This is from my mother,” he explained, setting down the basket. He handed the flowers directly to Verity. “These are from me.”

“Thank you,” she said, bending her head over the blossoms.

But Nate had spotted her reddened eyes. “You've been crying,” he said, dropping down to squat beside her so their faces were level. “Are you in pain? Do you want me to fetch a doctor?”

“No.” Heaven help her if she had to deal with Hadley Jones in the same room as Nate!

“Then what's wrong?”

Verity sighed. She slipped the notebook out from under the vines on the table and handed it to him. “It's my mother's diary.”

Nate met her eyes with a startled expression. He immediately turned to the back of the diary. “Oh, Verity . . . why are you reading this? Why would you torture yourself?”

“Because no one will tell me what happened!” She couldn't keep the frustration out of her voice. “Nate, won't you—?”

“I was three years old when she died. I don't
know
what happened. I've heard stories,” he admitted. “Every child in this town has heard stories about those graves—ghosts and treasure, the walking dead, and—” He faltered a bit. “Witches. But I haven't believed any of that since I was seven. And I don't think you can find out what really happened by reading this.” He held up the notebook.

“You can't be sure of that. Besides, I never knew my mother. This diary is all I have of her. Oh, Lucky, stop.” She made a grab at a coil of vine that was sliding toward the edge of the table and missed. The pile went over, spilling onto the floor and narrowly missing the kitten. He shot out of the dining room like an arrow.