A Hearth in Candlewood (2 page)

Widow Leonard smiled as she lifted one foot out from beneath the muddy hem of her skirts. ‘‘I feel much better already, but I’d sorely love to get out of these shoes, too.’’

After setting the travel bag on the floor close to the door, Emma carried a kitchen chair over to the fireplace and helped her late-night guest to the chair. Once she was settled, Emma stirred the last of the dying embers back to life and quickly added a few pieces of kindling from the woodbox.

‘‘We’ll get a bit of a fire going to warm you up,’’ she explained and retrieved the afghan Mother Garrett kept in the kitchen for when she felt a draft on her legs. She wrapped the afghan around the elderly woman’s shoulders before kneeling down in front of the rocking chair to help remove her guest’s shoes and stockings.

Once she was done, Emma leaned over to put the pair of shoes and stockings closer to the fire to dry before taking one of Widow Leonard’s feet and warming it between the palms of her hands.

‘‘You’re a blessing this night, Emma,’’ the widow crooned as she snuggled beneath the afghan.

Memories brought a smile to Emma’s heart. ‘‘When I was a little girl, I used to rub my grandmother’s feet for her when they were cold or achy. Feel better?’’

‘‘Ten times over. I’m curious, though. You haven’t asked me why.’’

Emma looked up and cocked her head.

‘‘Don’t you want to know why I’ve run away?’’

Emma dropped her gaze and continued to rub warmth into the woman’s foot as the fire bathed her back with welcome heat. ‘‘Well, I . . . I suppose I do. But I didn’t want to pry into matters that might be difficult for you to discuss.’’

‘‘At least you took me in without laughing at me, and for that I’m grateful,’’ Widow Leonard said quietly. ‘‘Imagine living long enough to see your eighty-first year, looking ahead, and seeing nothing but heartache.’’

Emma swallowed hard. Whatever had inspired this woman to run away from home was certainly no laughing matter, but she could not imagine how Widow Leonard might expect to hide herself at Hill House—not in a town the size of Candlewood. Despite the influx of newcomers the building of the Candlewood Canal had brought into their midst, gossip still spread pretty quickly here, especially within the town’s limits. Both of her sons would be frantic to find her once they realized she was missing, and they would not overlook Hill House as a place she might be.

Reluctant to cause the woman’s family undue worry, Emma smiled. ‘‘What about your sons? Aren’t they going to be worried about you?’’ she prompted.

Widow Leonard stared into the small fire and shook her head. ‘‘James and Andrew are so busy being angry with each other, they probably won’t even notice I’m gone.’’

Emma switched to the woman’s other foot, found it alarmingly cold, and started rubbing it warm again. ‘‘Truly, I doubt that. They were both here in Candlewood with their families today, weren’t they?’’

A shrug. Nothing more.

‘‘When the thunderstorm hit and everyone went into a panic, they must have started looking for you.’’

Another shrug. ‘‘I came to town with Andrew this morning, but I was supposed to go home with James. I change every six months, you know. It’s what Enoch wanted,’’ she explained, referring to her late husband, who had gone home to glory some eight or nine years back.

‘‘Then James, at least, must be looking for you.’’

A bit of a smile. ‘‘I told him I thought I wanted to stay with Andrew a bit longer. I’ve done it before. Stayed a few extra weeks, that is.’’

Emma set Widow Leonard’s foot down, leaned back on her haunches, and eased a kink from the base of her spine. Apparently, the woman had not acted on impulse. She had thought through her escape very carefully. ‘‘Andrew thinks you went home with his brother, and James assumes you went home with Andrew. Is that it?’’

‘‘And neither is the wiser. At least not for a few weeks,’’ the widow admitted.

‘‘What about next Sunday at services?’’

‘‘Only if they bother to come, and I’m well enough to attend,’’ she said with a wink and a smile that quickly faded. ‘‘As cross and disappointed as I am with both of them, I’d feel guilty if I caused them to worry about me,’’ she explained and rearranged the afghan across her shoulders. ‘‘They’re good sons, each in his own way. Just stubborn, like their father, and a bit ornery at times.’’

Emma grinned. ‘‘Like their mother?’’

Widow Leonard grinned back. ‘‘Perhaps.’’

‘‘You do realize they’ll find out you’re here, don’t you?’’

‘‘Eventually,’’ Widow Leonard admitted, and her gaze grew serious. ‘‘I must be frank, Emma dear. I sorely need a place to live, but I’m afraid I haven’t any coin to pay you.’’

When Emma opened her mouth to object, the elderly woman held up her hand. ‘‘Just hear me out, dear. I don’t know you all that well. In my younger days, though, I did know your mother and your grandmother, rest their souls. From all I’ve heard, you’re as generous as they both were, maybe more, but I don’t expect you to take me in like you did your mother-in-law when she landed on your doorstep all those years ago. I’m not privy to all the circumstances, but I do know you did what was right by welcoming her into your home and having her stay long after your husband died. And I don’t expect you to take me in on charity like you did Reverend Glenn, either. That was a very kind gesture, you know.’’

‘‘Reverend Glenn is a man of God. He . . . he married my husband and me, he baptized each of our three sons, and he buried my Jonas when he died. I could hardly look the other way when he needed a place to live with folks who could care for him after his stroke,’’ Emma countered, flushed by the praise she felt was ill-deserved.

‘‘Yes, you could have,’’ her guest argued, ‘‘but you didn’t. That’s because you’re a good woman. A kind woman. And I know you’d probably take me in on charity, too, but I won’t have it any other way than my way—which is to say, I’ll earn my keep here.’’

She held out her hands and smiled. ‘‘These old hands might look pretty awful, what with all the thick veins and swollen joints, but they’re not useless, even if the cold weather does slow them down a bit. In truth, come winter, my knees aren’t too good, either, but my eyesight is still sharp enough to see the dimples on the moon at night. I can still sew a stitch better than most younger women, too, so I was hoping perhaps I might work out an arrangement with you, like I used to do with your mother occasionally when she had the General Store.’’

Emma arched her back, stood up, and stretched her legs to bring them back to life again. ‘‘What kind of arrangement?’’

Widow Leonard looked up at the ceiling. ‘‘How many bedrooms do you have here at Hill House? Five? Six?’’

‘‘Upstairs? Seven large guest bedrooms, two smaller ones, plus one for me and one for Mother Garrett. Oh, and there’s one downstairs for Reverend Glenn. We converted the storage room behind the kitchen into a bedroom for him so he wouldn’t have to attempt the stairs.’’

‘‘That’s a lot of bed linens that might need mending or replacing, what with all the guests you have.’’

Emma let out a long sigh and managed to stifle a yawn. ‘‘Only until November, when they close the Candlewood Canal for the winter. Then we don’t usually have many guests until spring when they reopen the canal.’’

‘‘Precisely my point,’’ the widow continued. ‘‘During the next two months, you’ll be pretty busy with guests, so you could use my help keeping all the bed linens in fine order. I wouldn’t mind doing some embroidery, either. Come November, when business slows, I could start to embroider the linens you do have and make them extra special, something guests would really appreciate. Here, let me show you,’’ she insisted and looked over her shoulder toward the back door. ‘‘Bring me my travel bag, will you, dear?’’

Once Emma fetched the damp bag and set it on the floor alongside her guest’s chair, Widow Leonard easily reached down to open it. After taking out two balls of white cotton fabric, she unrolled them, one at a time, to reveal three-inch strips of cloth, each heavily embroidered.

She handed the end of the first one to Emma so that it stretched between them. ‘‘I wasn’t sure if you’d prefer color or not, but this one has lots of color. I could make the design any combination of colors you’d like, or I could do the same design in white or a single solid color,’’ she explained. She held up the second strip of cloth with an identical embroidered design that featured an intricate band of white intertwined flowers.

Emma fingered the elaborate yet delicate design on the soft fabric. Although the woman had a garish sense of color, Emma easily envisioned the same design coordinated to match each of the colors of the different guest bedrooms. ‘‘Your work is exquisite,’’ she murmured with all the admiration of a woman barely able to make more than a few standard stitches. She was also convinced, yet again, that Widow Leonard’s plans to run away had been made well before tonight, since she had obviously made these samples expressly to show Emma.

‘‘In return, all I would really need is a cot somewhere, perhaps in the garret? I don’t eat much. Not anymore, and I’d stay out of your way for sure,’’ the widow promised. She dropped her gaze and stared at her lap. ‘‘I’ve learned to be good at many things. I can learn to keep out of the way.’’

Emma’s heart skipped a beat. As a woman of substantial means in her own right, she had escaped the plight of most widows, who depended on their husbands to provide for them in their wills. Those widows also depended on the willingness of their children to adhere to the conditions attached to their inheritances— conditions that often spelled out exactly how the new widows, their mothers, should be provided for and treated.

Apparently Widow Leonard’s husband must have stipulated in his will that each of their two sons would provide for their mother equally, perhaps even dictating the six-month ritual that had her moving back and forth from her original home, which she suspected the eldest son, James, had inherited, to Andrew’s home, built on the land he had inherited.

After confirming her suspicions with the elderly widow, Emma nodded. ‘‘It must be difficult for you to be a guest in the home you once shared with your husband.’’

A long sigh. ‘‘It’s a widow’s lot in life, I suppose,’’ she replied. ‘‘I’ve had a good life, and I’ve been more blessed than most. Or at least until recently. Now . . . the situation is just unbearable. Since I can’t talk any sense into either James or Andrew, I decided that the best thing to do was to leave. Maybe if I’m not there . . .’’

As the woman drifted off into her private thoughts, Emma tried to sort out her concerns. Taking in Widow Leonard meant being brought into the middle of a family dispute. Once the owner of the General Store, as well as being in charge of the post office, Emma had been embroiled in such cases before. In some instances, people who had moved away would write and ask her to make arrangements for elderly relatives who had been left behind. In other cases related to her business, she had had to have her lawyer track down debtors to force them to be responsible for what they owed her. As a result, she knew more than a few families whose members turned against one another, or her, in the process.

Her position now, as the proprietress of Hill House, was very different, but guests often turned to her for advice concerning family matters. Still, she relied even more on His guidance now to know how to best use the fortune she had accumulated through her inheritances from her mother and grandmother, as well as the canal-building frenzy, which had made many of the parcels of land she owned far more valuable than she could ever have imagined. Growing interest from investors made deciding if and when to sell off more of the land a challenge, although there were a few parcels she would never sell.

Whether or not she should help Widow Leonard was not a difficult decision. She could not turn away this elderly, vulnerable widow any more than she could have ignored Reverend Glenn’s plight. She had the means to provide a home for her and most certainly would agree to the woman’s proposal, but she would need to rely on the good Lord to guide her in helping to bring an end to the dissension within the Leonard family itself.

She quickly dismissed the idea that if the trend of taking in permanent residents continued, she would have more staff than visitors, and instead whispered a prayer of gratitude for the family-of-sorts that God had sent to her in lieu of having her own children and grandchildren nearby.

Placing her hand on the elderly woman’s shoulder, Emma answered the questions in her troubled gaze with a smile. ‘‘Before we take to our beds, why don’t you tell me your ideas about the embroidering you’d like to do over a cup of tea and some buttered bread.’’

3

A
FTER THREE SOLID DAYS
of rain, Emma squinted her eyes at the bright sunlight. Finally! A break in the miserable weather. Maybe now her overflow of guests would begin to leave. She might even be able to sleep in her own bed tonight.

Humming softly, she eased from the massive leather chair in the corner of her office, ignored the pinch in her back, and stored away the blanket and pillow she had been using in her makeshift bed. She washed up and dressed quickly, slipping out of her nightgown into one of her usual long-sleeved gowns with a single petticoat she had laid out the night before.

She smoothed her full skirts and made sure the collar on the high-necked bodice lay flat. While the deep blue shade she wore today accented her pale blue eyes, the gown would show little dirt or even ink stains, which was much more important. Emma was a woman with classic and very practical taste, and she found herself gravitating toward earth tones and dark colors, as well as durable cottons, which made for easy laundering.

Once she finished dressing, she braided her blond hair. Instead of wrapping the braid into a knot at the back of her neck, however, she let it fall free down her back.

She opened the door connecting her office to the library, walked straight through to the center hall, and entered the dining room, where a platter of sliced bread and a tin of doughnuts rested on the sideboard. The smell of frying breakfast meats led her into the kitchen, where she found Mother Garrett at the cookstove, alternating her efforts between frying pans filled with links of sausage and thick slices of scrapple she would add to the platters of cooked meats on the kitchen table.