Business in the store was slow, and Lydia was moving slowly through the three rooms, straightening shelves, mentally checking inventory, and dusting where necessary. Her friends would sometimes wrinkle their noses at such menial labor, but she loved the clutter and variety that made up a well-stocked dry goods store and found a surprising amount of satisfaction in being master of it all. She could instantly turn to any one of a thousand items and knew, without asking, exactly how much it sold for. There was powder and ball for the rifles; a bewildering array of farm and work tools; pins and thread and needles; ladies’ bonnets, belts, and ribbons; a few small artificial flowers; expensive earthenware and cheap crockery; tobacco, some for smoking and some for “chawing”; bolts of jean and linsey; homespun cotton cloth and the expensive satins shipped in from Boston; sassafras and sage and crop-vine teas.
She looked up as she heard the small bell on the front door tinkle. She was in the back room, working with the barrel goods, half-blocked from a clear view by some reed baskets which hung from a post. But she had a clear view of the man’s face and with a quick start saw it was Nathan Steed. Moving a step back, so as to see him more clearly but keep herself out of view, she noted with satisfaction his quick scan of the store and the obvious look of disappointment on his face. Her mother was behind the counter waiting on another customer, and Nathan immediately hung back, as though not sure what he had come in for.
Surprised at the sudden rush of pleasure she felt, Lydia set down the feather duster, smoothed back her hair, and flicked at a spot of lint on her dress. She stepped out into view, pretending not to see him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him stiffen, then start slowly toward her. He came into the room and stopped. She fussed with a small barrel of molasses, then looked up in surprise. “Why, Nathan Steed.”
“Hello, Miss Lydia.”
“How are things with you today?” She winced inwardly, wanting to kick herself. She sounded like one of the young girls down at the grammar school.
“Just fine, thank you. And with you?”
“I’m fine. It’s been a while since you’ve been in.”
“With the harvest and all, it’s been pretty busy. I’ve also been helping Mr. Harris get his corn in.”
She nodded, stepped to a large barrel of pickled herring, and started to adjust its position.
“Here, let me do that.” He stepped forward and tipped the heavy barrel up on the tip of its rim. “Where would you like it?”
She pointed to a corner and he rolled it over there easily.
“Thank you.”
They stood there for a moment, both feeling a little awkward.
“I…” He turned and gestured toward the other room. “I was in town and thought I’d get some candy for the kids.”
“Oh. All right.” With Lydia moving ahead of him, they reentered the main area of the store and stepped to the large counter that ran the length of the store. On one end were several large glass jars filled with various hardtack candies and long strips of black licorice. Her mother, still with the woman at the far end of the counter, glanced up, smiled mechanically, as she did to all the customers, and promptly forgot about them.
Lydia felt a quick wave of relief that her father was upstairs in the storeroom taking inventory. Her mother suspected nothing about Lydia’s interest in Nathan, and he came in infrequently enough that it had not roused her suspicions. Her father tended to be much more perceptive.
The Steed family, with the exception of Joshua, was rapidly winning the respect of the local townspeople. Benjamin Steed was hardworking and his farm showed it, even after only one season. Word had also gotten out that he had been a successful and well-to-do farmer in Vermont. And more and more, women came into the store telling stories of Mary Ann Steed—sickness had struck a home and she was there for three days nursing the mother back to health. If there was fruit to be dried, corn to be husked, or venison to be cut into strips and smoked, somehow she always knew and showed up to help. She was midwife to more than one of the babies born in the north part of the township.
No, it was not the Steeds in general that raised her father’s concerns. The problem was Joshua. Josiah McBride had never liked Joshua for some reason, but when he left home and started work on the canal docks, that had settled it. With his frequent companionship with the Murdocks and others of Palmyra’s more questionable young men, those feelings had cemented into a rock-hard determination to steer his daughter away from him. If Joshua came into the store he was barely civil with him, and if Lydia lingered at all with him, he was instantly hovering over them, brows furrowed in open warning.
When Joshua’s younger brother started into the same pattern—coming in the store, looking around quickly, lighting up if Lydia was around, hanging back or leaving quickly again if she was not—Lydia saw the same wariness in her father’s eyes.
So why is it I still find Joshua so intriguing?
There was something about him that frightened her, and yet she still found it exciting to be with him. She thought of that night she had gone to the warehouse, and inwardly quaked again at the risk she had taken. She also remembered the relief she had felt when the Murdocks had suddenly shown up and given her an excuse to flee.
She jerked up, aware that Nathan was watching her quizzically. She blushed deeply, wondering how long she had wandered off. He smiled at her, which only added to her embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I was just thinking about your family. I…” She turned to the jars of candy and waved her hand in front of them. “What kind of candy would you like?”
“Four of these”—he touched the closest jar—“four pieces of licorice, and…” His eyes narrowed as he considered the other options.
“These are Matthew’s favorite,” she added helpfully, glad for a chance to recover her composure. “Becca’s too.”
“Then I’ll have five of those.”
She got a small sack and put the candy into it. When she turned back to him he was watching her closely. “Have you seen Joshua lately?” he asked.
Her head shot up. But his face was innocent, his eyes merely curious.
“Yes,” she finally answered, “I see him now and then when he comes in the store. But he works a lot now, so it’s not often.” Less
often than he wants.
Twice in the six weeks since that night on Canal Street she had found an excuse not to meet him.
“How is he?”
She considered that for a moment. He still talked about owning his own wagon. Bitterness still twisted his face when she spoke of his father or suggested he move back home. “Fine,” was all she could think of to finally say.
“We were hoping he could come home for Ma’s birthday on Sunday. I stopped at the boardinghouse and at the warehouse, but he’s not there.”
She almost asked him if he had checked the taverns but bit her tongue. It was common talk in the village that Joshua Steed spent more and more of his evenings drinking ale, playing cards or checkers, laughing loudly at some crude remark of Will Murdock. Twice Lydia had tried to raise the subject with him but got a curt reply and a clear message it was none of her affair.
Nathan picked up the sack of candy and handed her a coin. “I left a note for him at the boardinghouse, but if you happen to see him, could you give him that message for me?”
“What message?” a rough voice barked behind them. Lydia jumped and Nathan whirled around. Joshua had somehow come into the store without either of them seeing him and now stood directly behind Nathan.
Nathan flushed a little. “Joshua,” he blurted, “I didn’t hear you come in.”
He ignored that, looking directly at Lydia. “Hello, Lydia.”
“Hello, Joshua.” She finally dropped her eyes under the challenge of his gaze. She caught the faint smell of ale and knew her guess had been right. He smiled, a cool, humorless flicker that barely touched his mouth, then turned back to Nathan.
“You’re managing to spend a lot of time in town lately, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been to the blacksmith’s shop.”
“Yeah, I saw you go by.”
Nathan’s head came up slowly. “I came to buy Ma a birthday present.”
“At the blacksmith’s?” Joshua retorted.
“I’m buying her one of those swing-out hooks for the fireplace.”
Unconsciously Lydia nodded at the thoughtfulness of the gift. In frontier cabins the large stone fireplace was generally in the main room of the home. It was used for cooking, heating water, making ashes for the lye soap, melting beeswax or animal tallow for candle making, and a hundred other necessary functions. The women in the home had to be on constant guard so that their long skirts did not sweep around into the coals and catch fire. More than one frontier mother had been horribly burned by such carelessness. Then, some years before, some enterprising blacksmith had developed a metal framework which could be placed inside the fireplace. Swinging on a metal pivot, the hooks which held the pots and kettles over the fire could be pulled clear of the fireplace where these could be filled or stirred away from the fire and then swung back in.
Joshua merely grunted. Lydia watched Nathan and saw the irritation in his eyes.
Good,
she thought. While she found Joshua’s obvious jealousy flattering in a way, she was not his personal property, and resented the fact that he seemed oblivious to the effect his changing life was having on her. Besides, there had been nothing between her and Nathan except friendly encounters at the store. She was glad Nathan was not cowed by Joshua’s open belligerence.
“Ma’s birthday is Sunday,” Nathan said quietly.
“I know that.”
“She’d like you to come to dinner. I left a note with the lady at the boardinghouse.”
“Don’t know if I can.”
Nathan shook his head, clearly fighting for patience. “Don’t know if you can, or don’t know if you will?”
Joshua’s mouth tightened. “I said I don’t know if I can.”
“Suit yourself, but I think you owe it to Ma.” Nathan turned to Lydia and nodded. “Thank you for your help with the candy. The kids will be grateful.”
“You’re welcome. Good-bye, Nathan. Tell your mother happy birthday from me, will you?”
“I will, thank you.”
He strode out of the store, nodding curtly to Lydia’s mother and the woman she was serving.
As Nathan walked along the board sidewalk, he jammed the sack of candy down deep into one pocket. He was still fuming over the confrontation with Joshua. He was so stubborn! So proud. And yet, Nathan was honest enough to admit to himself it was more than that. Joshua had been spoiling for a fight the moment he came in the store, and Nathan darn well knew what was eating at him. Months ago he and Joseph Smith had teased Joshua about finding any excuse to go into the McBride store. That was before Nathan had met Lydia himself. Now he found himself doing exactly the same thing. He still remembered the first day in front of the store, when he and Joseph had driven up in the wagon. He had been transfixed, staring at the raven-haired beauty with the fair skin, the winsome smile, and those dark, teasing eyes. And Nathan could still close his eyes and conjure up the image of her standing amidst the apple blossoms, filling the air with the sorrowful tale of “Barbara Allen.”
He kicked at a small pebble on the walk, considering for the fortieth time the idea of leaving the field to Joshua. But that was another reason for his anger. Joshua was a fool. Nathan could still remember the way Lydia looked at Joshua back in those first days. One could almost sense the breathlessness of her spirit when Joshua was around. But that was gone now.
He sighed, wondering if this might not be his own hopes talking. Then he shook his head. There was no mistaking the dismay which darkened her face when Nathan had asked how Joshua was doing. He gave a short grunt of disgust. Everyone seemed to have dismay in his eyes when speaking of Joshua anymore, not the least of whom was his mother. Joshua’s curt rebuff of the invitation to the birthday meal irked Nathan. Pa was one thing; that wasn’t good, but it was understandable. But Ma? That really galled him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Steed.”
Nathan looked up, startled. An attractive, well-dressed woman was approaching him. She was tall and slender, perhaps two or three inches taller than Lydia, but had the same glistening, dark hair and wide, dark eyes. Her hair was pulled back from her face and fell at the back in ringlets.
Stopping, she held out her hand, smiling at his confusion. “I’m Emma Smith. And you’re Nathan, aren’t you?”
Joseph’s wife! Of course! He shook her hand briefly. “Yes, I remember now. How are you Mrs. Smith?”
She smiled even more. “I’m fine, thank you. And please call me Emma.”
A week or so after Nathan’s father had told Joseph and Hyrum not to come back to work again, Nathan had met the whole Smith family in the village. It had been an embarrassing moment for Nathan. He had tried to apologize for his father’s actions, but Joseph had simply smiled and brushed it aside and proceeded to introduce him to his family. Father Smith, as they called him, since his name was Joseph too, was a quiet man, and now Nathan could barely remember him. Joseph’s mother, a tiny woman, not five feet tall and weighing less than a hundred pounds, had the opposite impression on him. Nathan had liked her almost instantly. She was full of spunk, with bright blue eyes that laughed merrily, or flashed with quick anger when Nathan mentioned what the townspeople were saying about Joseph. There had been a sister and two younger brothers, but Nathan couldn’t remember their names now. And Joseph and Hyrum had both been accompanied by their wives. Jerusha, he remembered. Emma and Jerusha.
“Joseph was just speaking of you the other day,” Emma was saying.
“Oh?”
“Yes. He was wondering how the crops had turned out for your family.”
“We did well, thanks to the help he and Hyrum gave in clearing the land.”
“Good, I’ll tell him.”
“Is Joseph in town with you?”
“Yes. He’s at the livery stable, checking on some harness equipment.”
“I’d like to see him. Would you mind if I walked with you?”
“Not at all. I’m going there now.” As he turned and fell into step beside her, Nathan remembered a phrase Hyrum had once used when he spoke of Joseph’s new wife. Or at least she had been new then. They had been married in January. He had said she was a gracious lady. Now as they chatted and walked along he had to agree with that assessment. It was not hard to see why Joseph had felt it worth his time to make the hundred-and-twenty-mile journey to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to court this woman. Her speech was cultured and precise, but she was warm and quick to laugh. Nathan found himself feeling comfortable with her almost immediately.