Surrender The Night (18 page)

“Do as your ma says.” John pointedly thrust his own empty bowl at Jimmy. Jimmy snatched it and rattled the crockery together as he stacked the bowls.

“And ef ’ee put so much as a crack en any piece, ’ee’ll pay for et,” Rachel warned. Then, relaxing, she turned to Katrina. “Now, lass, tell us what brought ’ee here.”

Katrina looked helplessly at Will, who’d watched the exchanges at table with silent enjoyment, but he seemed interested in his napkin. “I, ah, wanted to see more of England than London, and since I left my last employment rather suddenly, I had no references. The further I went, the better, under the circumstances.” She held her breath hopefully, then let it out when both Rachel and John nodded.

“And where better than Land’s End? Though ’ee’ve a ways to go yet to find that. But now I see why ’ee don’t seek work en one of the great houses,” John said. “Ais, their loss es our boon. I know an honest lass when I meet one.”

Katrina made a show of folding her napkin to hide her sudden tears as she thought. But do you know a virtuous one? She was glad when Will began to talk to John about the mine. When John left to return to work, Will walked him to the door. Jimmy and the others had disappeared as soon as the table was clear, Katrina assumed to return to their chores.

Rachel seemed to sense her distress, for she handed Katrina a clean cloth. “I’d be graateful ef ’ee’d dry,” she said, scooping hot water from another kettle over the fire into a wooden tub, then adding cold water to it from a bucket.

When the dishes were done, Rachel guided Katrina to a narrow, uneven set of plank stairs that led off the kitchen. Up above, Katrina saw one big room divided by a wood panel that didn’t reach the rafters. On each side were two low, narrow, homemade beds set with straw mattresses. On the chimney wall vents had been chinked into the whitewashed walls to allow the hearth’s warmth to escape into the room. Still, Katrina imagined it got icy cold in the winter. The small, square window set with bubbly glass let the brilliant sunlight only dimly into the room.

“Robert’s been staayin’ weth Ellie, but we’ll move him en weth the boys.”

“I'don’t want to take anyone’s bed. Perhaps I could sleep in the bam—”

“Tush.” Rachel bent to strip the bed
linens as she spoke. “We’ve a spare bed en storage.”

Katrina thought her voice sounded muffled, and when she turned, moisture glimmered in Rachel’s eyes. “I’ll get Will to breng your thengs up.” She hurried back down the stairs, leaving Katrina wondering why Rachel had suddenly looked upset.

The quietness of the house seemed oppressive after the intense family luncheon, and after Will left, promising to visit in a few days, Katrina asked Rachel for something to do.

So began the busiest time of her life. “For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do” might have been a phrase coined by the Tonkins, Katrina often thought in the ensuing days. Each family member gave Satan short shrift.

Robert had the lightest chores of milking the cow, feeding the stock, and picking what vegetables and herbs were available. Jimmy and Bryan tended the fields, fetched the water, and collected the furze and turf for the ever-burning fire. Ellie helped her mother with the baking, cleaning, sewing, and washing. Even in the evenings family hands were seldom idle. While John read to all from the Bible or from one of his few , cherished books, the children and their mother carded wool, cleaned vegetables, stripped goose feathers, and sorted grain. Katrina helped with all when she wasn’t busy with the children.

She squeezed lessons in between their duties. She usually
taught Robert, who didn’t even know his alphabet, in the morning after he’d tended the stock. She tutored the others before supper, when all had collected prior to the meal. As she’d suspected, Ellie proved indifferent to acquiring skills she was convinced she’d never use, and Bryan was eager to learn. Jimmy was the brightest, but wasted his intelligence. He rushed through her tediously devised lessons, missing half. He was very good at staring at her attentively, his chin propped on his hand, while he daydreamed. The fact that he was at the age where, as the old ones said, sap was rising in his young body, made her chore doubly difficult.

Two weeks after she’d moved in she was t
ired from yet another sleepless night and the never-ending chores. When Jimmy’s gaze wandered from her face to her bodice one too many times, her patience snapped.

Quietly, she closed the math book John had borrowed from his landowner and set it on the table. “Jimmy, tell me what a square root is.” They were still multiplying and dividing, so she knew the definition would be beyond him.

His gaze snapped up from her bodice to her face. He answered steadily, “It’s a . . . root that’s square, of course.”

“No, it’s a factor, multiplied by itself, to yield a number. Now, tell me the square root of four and you shall be free for the evening. No more reading, or figuring—number, or form.” She emphasized the last word and was mollified a bit when he had the grace to flush.

When Ellie and Bryan snickered, he shot them an angry look. “I don’t know!”

“What a pity. Then you shall have to continue studying after supper until you’re ready to go on to something more chal
lenging than multiplication. Ellie, Bryan, that’s enough for this evening. You may go.” Katrina rose, too, but Jimmy caught her wrist.

“You don’t know the answer yourself. Admit it,
teacher.”
Katrina didn’t give him the satisfaction of a struggle. She met his blazing brown eyes and said evenly, “I gave you the easiest number there is to figure. If one wants the square root of four, one divines what number, multiplied by itself, equals four. In this case, the answer is two. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and willingness to learn could have figured it out. What, I wonder, does that say of you?’ ’

When Jimmy’s fingers tightened, she stifled a wince
. John, who was sitting with Rachel on a bench adjacent to the fire, turned to look and half rose. Katrina glanced at him and slightly shook her head, then met Jimmy’s eyes again.

“It says I’ve no use for fancy figures nor fancy women.” He raked her with a scathing look.

Katrina went still. Fury misted her eyes, but she gritted her teeth and counted to ten. She had committed herself to teaching these children, and she was not ready to admit defeat. “Doubtless Mr. James Watt, whom you so admire, would find your comment ridiculous. I assure you he uses more than multiplication and division to design his engines. Now release me, and finish your work. Then I want you to write, twice, the multiplication table all the way to fifty.” When Jimmy’s fingers tightened more, this time she couldn’t suppress a wince.

When his father said sharply, “Jimmy! Leave her be!” Jimmy flung her hand away, pulled some paper toward him, and bent his head. Katrina rubbed her aching wrist and went to join John and Rachel. Rachel clicked her tongue and sent Jimmy a worried look.

“That one’s a rebel for sure. He’ll dangle on a rope’s end, I fear, ’less he quits that wild gang he jaunts weth. Ded he hurt ’ee?”

“Not really. And I don’t think he’s bad. More angry and undirected. He seems to want to work in the mine. Why won’t you let him, John?”

“Will should be able to tell ’ee that,” John replied. “Ais, he could show ’ee, too. The doc knows better than others how dangerous the work es. My men thenk I’m crazy to let my able-bodied boys earn a pettance workin’ in the laird’s fields when they could bring in a good wage. But I . . .” His voice cracked, and he had to steady it before going on, “I lost my twens en a cave-en, and I’ll not resk my other lads.”

Katrina’s throat closed at the tears glittering in John’s eyes, but she liked him more than ever when he blew his nose on his kerchief without shame. Rachel, with a funny hiccup, rose to serve up the ubiquitous broth, made from fish heads this time.

“I . . . wondered why there was such an age difference between Robert and the others,” Katrina said softly.

“Ais, the twens would have been twelve thes summer. Bryan and Jimmy worked the bal ’fore then.” When Katrina looked confused, John explained, “Our term for mine is
bal,
lass.” He sighed and admitted, “And I’ll not pretend I don’t need their waages, but at least I know they’re saafe. As long as we can keep body and soul together, my lads staay awa’.”

The atmosphere at the table was subdued that night. Instead of the rollicking gossip they usually had about neighbors and the doings of the gentry in the area, they discussed the cholera epidemic spreading in the far eastern part of the county. Bitter experience had shown how fast the illness traveled.

“I’m glad Will’s back,” John said. “Even ’fore hes schoolin’, he were the one we depended on. The old bal doctor were drunk more often than not.” John passed Rachel the pipe he lit with an ember from the fire, then lit his own. Bryan and Ellie soon followed suit, and only Jimmy, writing laboriously in the flickering lantern light, and Robert abstained.

Katrina shook her head when John offered her a pipe. “No, thank you.” She coughed as the rich aroma of the tobacco filled the room, but she was becoming accustomed to the scent.

“Does Will go into the mine, er, bal, with you?” Katrina asked.

“Not unless a man’s hurt too bad to breng out. I does what I can to keep the men saafe. That’s a captain’s job. But the good ore on the top is worked out. We’re havin’ to go deeper and deeper, and these old pumps just esn’t reliable. The water gets to the timber. I’ve asked the owners many times to buy better pumps, but they saay the bal esn’t producin’ enou’ good ore to paay for them.” John clamped his teeth about his pipe and stared moodily into the fire.

John rarely discussed the mine, and now Katrina understood why. He was obviously frustrated at the dangerous conditions, but didn’t know what to do to make them better. And since his only skill was mining, he couldn’t seek other work. It was hardly surprising that he’d forbidden his boys to work under the same conditions, despite the resulting economies the household was forced to undergo.

The dusk was deepening when Ellie quietly tapped out her pipe, set it on the ledge above the bench, and rose. Instead of going to the stairs, however, she eased out of the kitchen toward the front door.

“Ellie,” John said sharply. “Where are ’ee goin’?”

The closing door was his answer. John leaped to his feet, but Rachel caught his arm. “Et’ll do no good to maake her come back. She’ll just sneak out when your back’s turned. Let her see her beau. She’ll come to the truth of his naature soon enou’.”

John looked as if he might argue, then he threw his weight back down so hard the old bench creaked. “And maaybe too late. I’ll have my only daughter a wife ’fore she’s a mother.”

“’Ee should have more faaith en your daughter than that. Besides, she’s eighteen and old enou’ to make up her own mind. ’Ee cannot protect her forever.”

Katrina averted her eyes from the parental argument, but her heart ached for all of them. For John’s frustration, for Rachel’s good sense despite her worry, but most of all for Ellie. They’d become friends in the past weeks. When the candles had been snuffed, she and Ellie had only each other to quieten the wild Cornish winds. Ellie had often told Katrina of her attraction to that bold, wickedly handsome tutworker Jack Hennessy. Katrina knew he’d pressed her to be intimate, but that so far Ellie had resisted. She wanted to lie with him, but in the marriage bed instead of on the moors.

Poor Ellie, Katrina thought now. Katrina knew what it was to long for a man who wasn’t good for her. To yearn to quaff the cup of knowledge with a man whose mere presence was heady. But Katrina also knew what a bitter residue that potent brew left. . . .

With a muttered, “Good night, everyone,” Katrina leaped to her feet and hurried up the stairs to her straw bed. She heard the boys go to their cubicle soon after. One of them blew out the lantern, but the darkness only increased Katrina’s torment, for it was easier then to visualize the face that she’d desperately tried to forget.

An hour later, defeated, she sat up. She rarely slept more than a few hours each night. Perhaps suppressing her memories only made them more vivid. She rose and went to the window, which was open to let the cool night air into the attic.

She’d learned the hard way that the only way to defeat Demon Devon was to face him down. That appeared to be as true in absence as in the flesh. Deliberately, she stared into the darkness and let herself recall the beauty of his face and form. The old yearning took her, but it was muted by pain. She’d  been right to leave. He’d have tired of her soon, anyway.

Ah, but you’d still have your babe, had you stayed. The sly thought crept into her mind. She bit her lip to stifle a moan, and her hand strayed to her abdomen. How could she have remained after that last night? He’d used her like a harlot, forced her to face the fact that her morality was weaker than her sensuality, then tried to recompense her conscience with gifts. No, she had to leave then. A promise coerced from her had little meaning, especially after he’d used her so.

The emotional pain of that night became muddled with the physical and heartsick pain that soon followed. She hated him, she told herself. No man could put a woman through such agony and still hold her regard. But if so, why couldn’t she forget?  Could it be—she didn’t want to? Despite everything, did she still care for him?

Her mouth twinged, and she rea
lized she’d bitten herself. She licked the tiny wound, and soon the salty taste of blood mingled with her tears. She clenched her fists and whispered, “No. I only need time to exorcise you, Demon Devon. Please, God, help me forget.”