Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 1) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

    
 
R
ebecca
watched the man ascend the stairs in obvious discomfort, his shoulders hunched and legs rigid. She was sure his posture illustrated his displeasure with her behavior. She stood watching long after he had disappeared from her view, chastising herself for being so bold once again with the man. He was friendly and very kind to her, but it was obvious to Rebecca that he did not feel comfortable if she were too physically close to him and she swore that she would try very hard not to be in the man’s way again. Rebecca retrieved Timothy’s discarded papers and placed them in a neat stack on the enormous desk.

      She returned to her inspection of the wooden box, but her overwhelming excitement of discovering the needlework had dimmed, and it was nearly an hour before Rebecca could stop thinking about how badly she had behaved. She refilled the box and took it into the kitchen for a good cleaning.

      Timothy lay awake in the bed, tossing and restless from his encounter with the girl. Although he had not searched out the company of a woman since his wife’s death, he began to struggle with the self-control he had taken great pride in. Alone in the dark room he felt frustrated and embarrassed, hoping intently that she had been unaware of his reaction to her. He tried to assure himself that she was likely oblivious, since he had removed her from his shifting lap as swiftly as possible before his excitement became evident. Eventually he drifted off, attempting to focus instead on his commitments to the fast approaching morning and putting aside his experience with the girl.

      Rebecca searched the cupboard for a light oil or soft wax to clean and polish the knitting box. After finding something she felt had the aroma and consistency she thought would work, she gathered a few soft cloths and took to vigorously rubbing down the old wood. To her delight she discovered that the box was intricately carved, the large round top adorned with a firmly packed surface of superior leather. She polished the equipment inside as well, buffing the needles and shuttles to a clean smooth surface.

    The work soothed her, and eased her mood somewhat, and, as she prepared to organize the contents neatly into the box, the cook appeared on the back stairs wearing a billowing nightdress.

      “Why, Miss, what on earth are you doing up at this hour here all alone?” The cook saw that Rebecca had brought out cleaning supplies and was fussing with the old knitting chest. “Ah, I see you found that old box. I thought it had been packed away years ago. I had forgotten how lovely it was.”

      “Timothy said I might keep it, if that’s alright with you.” Rebecca asked, concerned that if Birget recognized the box she might like it herself.

      “Alright with me? The box belonged to the Old Miss, I have no need for it. When the girls in my home were fussing with such things, I was wantin’ to be at the stove. I suppose you could empty it out and fill it with trinkets and such.”

      “Oh, no Birget,” Rebecca exclaimed. “What’s inside is the best part! Look!” Rebecca opened the box and showed the cook the contents.

      “Ah, a hand-worker you are then. My own mother had a fine hand with such things. In fact I don’t recall that she traveled anywhere without her knitting provisions. And that old pillow she kept, the one filled with the pins and the straw, she said it went back generations.”

      Birget thought the girl sweet and old fashioned and hoped she would remain in the big house. She thought that her employer might be a bit taken with the girl and that the change in his mood and appearance had something to do with Rebecca’s presence in the house. Birget had begun to worry that the man had become increasingly despondent, but, as she had watched from the kitchen window and seen them laughing in the yard over the new contraption, she hoped fervently that the man was overcoming his grief.

      “Timothy said there might be more things in the attic and possibly tomorrow someone could take me up to find them.”

      “That box is certainly large enough to hold a bit more. I’ll have one of the girls take you up in the morning. I expect you can keep your own knitting things in there as well.” Birget knew that the girl had arrived empty handed and from what she had seen with her keen eyes the girl possessed nothing of her own. If Rebecca was so interested in the craft she most definitely had needles of her own, somewhere, she deduced as the girl reacted to her evocative remark.

      “I lost all of my belongings while traveling,” Rebecca replied, obviously distressed at the memory.

      Almost everyone in the household knew the girl had been hostage somewhere near the old cabin, but many details were lacking. Birget thought the girl seemed to know no one and perhaps could benefit from a good ear.

      “Birget,” Rebecca ventured. “Tell me about Corissa. I have so many questions and I don’t know who else I might ask.”

      “Ah yes, Corissa.” Birget began. “The place surely has not been the same since her passing.” The woman filled a large cast teapot and asked Rebecca if she would like tea.

      Rebecca nodded and sat down at the table listening to the cook.

      “I came to work for the Old Miss when Corissa was just a child. When she married Timothy she had lost her husband in an accident on the river and she already had the boy. Timothy was so good to her and gave her so much, building Stavewood almost singlehandedly as his wedding gift to her. He brought the Old Miss and me up here once, just to show us the place. It was nearly finished then and not so much of the land had been cleared. He told the old woman that he was going to ask Corissa to marry him, hoping that the home would persuade her and she might accept his proposal.”

      “Persuade her?” Rebecca didn’t understand.

      “Corissa never got over the loss of her husband, Rebecca. Don’t misunderstand, she was very fond of Timothy, and he tried so awfully hard to please her, but love… I just don’t know.

      “When he brought her up to Stavewood on their wedding night, things began to change. The Old Miss and I came up here to live and we loved the place so, and Timothy, he is such a good man, if strange in his ways sometimes.

      “Corissa thought the place was too isolated for her taste. The man kept clearing out more trees, putting the rose garden out back for her and leveling out the yard. I’d see him out there days on end felling the trees with his own hand and wearing out those poor horses pulling the stumps. Corissa still found the place out-of-the-way and confining and often took her horse and went into town alone, sometimes for days.”

      Rebecca recalled the look on Timothy’s face when she told him she felt trapped at Stavewood and choked back tears.

      “She’d leave the boy up here, but for a long time the man was not quite sure how to deal with a child. The Old Miss and I took over most of the responsibility of the child, while Timothy tried to find his way with him. Yet, Corissa continually reminded him in many ways that the boy had a father already. If not for that I think he may have thought of the boy as if he were his own. Corissa constantly interfered with that while she was alive.”

      Rebecca insisted that she pour the tea herself, allowing the cook to continue her narrative.

      “A few years back, when the Old Miss died, Corissa spent less and less time around the place. Her mother was always at the girl about being away from here so much, and, without her reminders, Corissa chose to be in town most of the time. Timothy would ride out to find her, but often times he came back alone.”

       The woman stirred cream into her tea absent-mindedly, and continued her story.

      “When she’d been away for nearly a month, I guess he had had enough and the two of them got into a dreadful fight. We could all hear them from the upstairs arguing out in the garden. He kept asking her if she was so unhappy here, why did she marry him? She called Stavewood a ‘backwoods burden’ and she told him she had only stayed because it was someplace to be for the time being. Corissa accused him of trying and failing to build her a proper home so far away from civilization and that, no matter how grand he made the place, even if he were to build her a castle, it would be no more than a glorified outhouse stuck in the woods far away from the city.

      “He kept telling her that the place was nothing of the sort and that she could have told him long before that she felt that way. He had built the home out of love, never to be an obligation.”

      Rebecca sniffled silently, remembering her first look at the magnificent home, perched so gloriously on the hill. She recalled her own conversation with the man in the garden, and could understand now that he was just naturally so generous. It became clear to her why he had told her that he had not brought her to Stavewood out of pity. He just brought her to his home because she had nothing and nowhere to go. Timothy never expected any more than her simple appreciation for any of it. She remembered how he smiled so proudly, yet with something more, when she first had reacted to the wonderful home. Rebecca was convinced that there were many things she did not understand about the man.

      “But the house is so very beautiful.” She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket and rubbed her nose. “When we first arrived I could not believe the vision of it, as if it were alive.”

      “Yes, I know, child,” Birget sighed. She felt the same emotions every time she approached the beautiful Queen Anne.

      “Corissa just didn’t see it that way,” she went on. “Oh I’m sure she was fond of the man when she first met him, and he was and is again considered to be the finest catch in the territory. But Corissa didn’t see it that way. It wasn’t in her nature to be away from the city life. She was widowed, with a young child, and Timothy was no pauper. I think she just thought he’d make her comfortable and care for her son. No one could possibly imagine he would have built Stavewood. What ordinary man would do such thing?”

      “No,” Rebecca smiled sadly. “Timothy is certainly no ordinary man.”

      The cook touched the girl’s hand.

      “The night they fought she took that poor chestnut mare and the next day the sheriff rode out and found her fallen beside the lane, not far from here. She had barely left the place. Timothy placed his wife in her family’s plot in the city where she had wanted to be all along. That poor horse came limping back with a bad leg when they buried Corissa the following day. We all watched him in the yard when the mare staggered back that afternoon with his gun in his hand. We thought he had to destroy the poor beast and that she would never walk again. He put down the rifle and spent weeks working with that animal. They told him to finish the horse, but he’d have none of it. As long as that creature seemed to keep trying he kept working on her. The day she trotted out from the stables bearing weight on that leg and he didn’t have to care for her any more he started traveling about, buying up all that burned out land. He had named the mare
Love
, a gift on their first Valentine’s Day. He never called that horse by her name again.”

      Birget took a sip of her tea.

      “And that fire, awful thing it was. So many died and had it not been for the trains we might all have perished. The poor man was still so overcome with grief he nearly died saving all of us, setting break fires around the place and all along the tracks. They called it one of the worst fires in the history of Minnesota, they did. Burned over 250,000 acres. First those two years of terrible drought and then it all went up in flames. Blazes got so hot they fused the tracks right to the train cars. The Hinkley fire, I’ll never forget it. If Timothy had not nearly worked himself to death, Stavewood and many of the local residents might not be here today. Sometimes we thought he believed that if he kept the place standing Corissa might come to her senses and come home.”

      Rebecca was overcome with emotion. She had no idea what their lives had been like. She sobbed silently.

      “Don’t cry, Miss.” Birget gulped at her tea. “Things are much better now. You’ve seen him with the boy, I know. And the man himself, I’ve not seen him so relaxed since Corissa’s death. Maybe you have something to do with that, eh?”

      Rebecca was certain that if she had done anything, it was to upset the man.

      “Tell me what she looked like, please?” she asked, her original thoughts and images of Corissa now had vastly changed.

      “A big girl she was, tall and upright as any man. Her coloring was light and she had a determined way about her as if she never stood long in one place.”

      “Like Octavia?” Rebecca questioned, sure there was something between Timothy and the big woman.

      “Oh, heavens!” The cook exclaimed. “If you took two of me and stacked me up I would still not be the size of Miss Octavia!”

      Rebecca giggled through her brimming tears, yet it made perfect sense to her. Timothy had thrown the party with Octavia and seemed worried about her late arrival. The woman he had loved so deeply was a robust girl, perhaps not as large as Octavia, but not the thin and pitiful thing she thought herself to be. Whatever she might have imagined was interest in her was just his kind way. Octavia was part of Timothy’s world, a world Rebecca thought she would never understand.

      “Thank you, Birget.” Rebecca hugged the woman briefly and gathered the box, excusing herself and walking towards the stairs to prepare for bed.