Winds of Salem (6 page)

James had mentioned he and Nate often came to these woods, and while she had hoped, she truly did not expect to see her love, so when Nathaniel Brooks stepped onto the path, he took her by surprise.

He was a sight to behold: elegant, tall, slim, self-assured as he walked toward her, an amused smile twitching on his lips. He
wore a blue linen shirt, open at the collar, black breeches tucked into heavy boots, his hat angling over an eye. His face was clean-shaven, and his dark hair shone brilliantly in the sun as he removed his hat to greet her.

“Mistress Beauchamp!” he called to her as they approached. “We are well met! Fancy seeing you here!”

“Mistress!” she echoed, laughing. “Miss is more like it for I am not goody yet. Or just Freya, if you will.” Her words appeared to come easily enough, but her heart was in her throat. Most likely, she thought, there was too much color in her cheek.

Nate stopped a few feet away. They both froze. His mouth opened as if to speak, but he refrained. They laughed at their awkwardness, and Freya relaxed a bit, her shoulders dropping. She studied the swell of his lips, the rich, deep green of his eyes.

“I received your card,” she said.

“What card?” he asked, with a naughty glint in his eyes.

“How did you know I could read?” She wasn’t being coy—she genuinely wanted to know. Perhaps he could tell her something about herself. Perhaps he had recognized her from the life she’d forgotten.

He pursed his lips then smiled. “I did not know of your literacy, but if I did, I would say it is your haughty and refined manner that would have given it away.”

“Really!” She let out a laugh. “Haughty? Refined?”

“Yes, like a lady, a woman of high standing, a princess or a queen.” He grinned.

“Why thank you very much,
Mr. Brooks
,” she said facetiously.

He took another step forward. “ ’Tis nothing! And you must call me Nate!”

“Is that all you wish to tell me? That my comportment is haughty? That I behave as if I am above my station? A mere servant like myself…” She lowered her eyes. She knew she should
behave more humbly, but at the same time she believed his palpable attraction allowed her some latitude. Although she
was
taking a risk by being impudent.

“No,” he said. “Not at all.” He moved closer so that they stood inches apart. “But I am glad you are here. Ever since we first met I have harbored a deep desire to be with you, to
know
you… I didn’t mean—” He had embarrassed himself, Freya knew, for to “know” a woman was to know her intimately.

She looked into his eyes. “What didn’t you mean?” She attempted not to laugh. It was fun to make him squirm a bit.

He took a deep breath and lowered his head. “I didn’t mean any impropriety to your person.”

She would like to think Nate’s interest in her was more than just the licentious feelings of a young man of privilege for a pretty servant girl. “You are forgiven, Nate.” She smiled, swaying as she clasped her hands. “I should take your leave, as I must return to the farm soon or else someone might come looking for me.”

“May I walk with you?”

She nodded. “Let me get my basket.”

He rushed toward it. “Allow me!”

Freya and Nate walked silently in tandem, crossing the meadow. They entered the path in the woods. He held a bramble up for her and she ducked through. They had grown shy, as if there was nothing more to say or they could think of nothing. Neither could find the right words. Then the sight of Nate carrying a woman’s basket made Freya giggle.

He stopped in the path, turning to her with a wounded look. “Why are you laughing?”

She laughed more. She couldn’t stop, her bosom quaking
above her bodice. “It’s just funny,” she said, “a handsome, tall lad like yourself carrying a maid’s basket!”

He gave her a stern, squinting look, then in a huff dropped the basket at his feet, the pots and pans making a terrible clatter.

“The basket!” she said, looking down. What was wrong with him? She was about to kneel to retrieve it, but he reached over and clamped her at the waist with two strong hands, holding her fixed in place, just as she had foreseen when she first saw him.

They stared at each other. Freya’s heart rebounded inside her chest. She wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake letting this young fellow accompany her alone through the woods.

Then his shoulders began to shake and he was laughing, and she realized it had been a joke, a play at seriousness, at annoyance, and she laughed, too, incredibly relieved. He let her go. They smiled at each other. He stepped aside, closer, and grabbed her maiden’s cap, holding it aloft with a mischievous grin. When she made a leap to grab it, he bounded away, taunting her with the cap, waving it in the air.

“Stop!” she said, but he only laughed.

She made another attempt to nab it, but he caught her shoulder with his free hand, and swung his hand with the cap around her waist. They stood still. She inhaled him. He smelled of work, mud, and the woods. He felt as solid as the pines around them. Nate whispered in her ear, the words rushing. “How beautiful you are with your red hair along your cheek.” He pushed a curl out of her face as he said this, seeing how the sun lit it up, then placed her cap back on her head. “Miss Beauchamp, I fear I have…”

“Freya, my name is Freya.”

“Freya then,” he said softly.

Freya wanted him to hold her longer and to hear what he had
to say, but regardless of her dislike of Salem, she still had to live within its rules, and she broke the embrace regretfully before he could finish what he was going to say.

“I feel the same way… yet…” She shook her head and looked around the empty forest.

He nodded, releasing her from his embrace. He understood the rules as well as she.

chapter six

The Proposal

Freya ascended the flight of creaking wooden steps to the study, holding the candlestick aloft to find her way. Mr. Putnam wanted her to meet him there once she was finished with her work. As much as Mercy told her not to worry, Freya fretted. She had never been called to his study before. Surely, she must have done something wrong.

Now that she thought about it, she had performed a multitude of crimes. Perhaps someone had seen her and Nate together in the woods the other week and reported it to her master. She would surely get the lash—that is, if Mr. Putnam wanted to take care of her misdeeds himself. What if he suspected her of witchcraft? Had the mistress of the house mentioned her efficacious physics? What would happen if she had?

She stood at the door, spying the flickering candlelight in a crack in the wood. Thomas was in there, waiting for her. With a trembling hand, she tugged her skirt, righted her cap, then held her head up and knocked quietly so as not to wake the household.

She heard him cough. “Come in!”

“Mr. Putnam,” she said once the door was closed. She curtsied, even though he wasn’t looking her way.

Thomas sat at his desk, writing in a ledger, briefly glancing up as he dipped his pen in the inkwell, then continued to write.
“Freya,” he said. “Give me a moment.” He blew on the ink. His face was expressionless, giving nothing away.

Freya kept one arm at her side while she held the candlestick. He flicked his eyes up at her. “You may put the candlestick down.”

She walked to a small table to set it there and returned to her spot in the middle of the room, clasping her hands at her apron.

“You may look me in the eye,” he said.

She lifted her chin but not too proudly so as to provoke more severe a punishment. Her eyes met Thomas’s piercing ones. They were an icy blue.

He clapped his hands. “I have propitious news!” he exclaimed.

“Propitious?” she echoed, surprised. This was not what she had expected. She had been awaiting her doom. Nor would she ever have anticipated the man’s apparently favorable mood or to be made privy to any kind of news, propitious or otherwise.

Thomas shrugged. “I was surprised myself!” His eyes roamed her body, sizing her up. She felt a bit like cattle. He smiled. That was a first. “Well, to get straight to the heart of the matter,
so to speak
”—here he smiled again—”Mr. Nathaniel Brooks has asked for your hand in marriage.”

Freya started. She stood dumbfounded for a while but sought to hide all the emotions stirring within her. She wanted to run down the stairs and wake Mercy to tell her the tremendous news immediately. She attempted to suppress a smile, and her mouth curled into a frown. “Why… why…” she fumbled as Thomas studied her. “I don’t know what—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he interrupted. “This is most excellent and providential for you as well as me. Though it might seem displeasing to you at the moment—you are but a girl,
and a young one—this means you will be a rich little wife soon. I am happy for you!”

She had obviously concealed her feelings well. This news was anything but displeasing to her. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Nate since she had first glimpsed him, and she held on to the memory of his arms around her waist. What relief to know there would be no more reason to conceal their affections now that he had asked for her hand!

“You are fortunate. They are a prosperous family,” Thomas continued. “They own much land, seafarers as well as farmers and involved in commerce. As much as the latter ires me, I cannot deny that they are influential in the port. This would be a helpful alliance, one that might give me more sway in Salem Town. And it would also, of course, be a tremendous step upward for you.” He shook his head, laughing to himself. “To think just a little while ago you were an orphan on our doorstep!”

Dazed, Freya didn’t know what more to say. Thomas had dipped his pen in the inkwell once more. She curtsied, about to take her leave, and went to retrieve the candlestick.

“I am not finished,” he said.

“Oh!” She turned.

“Not a word about any of this. You know how the villagers chatter, but I do want you to get to know Mr. Brooks of course. However, don’t let him know I have informed you of his intentions. I have simply told him I will consider the offer and dowry.” He wriggled a bit in his seat. “The utmost discretion must be applied, Freya. Mr. Brooks has seen you in the meetinghouse and is very fond. You are pious and chaste, and I trust you to remain so. Not a word to Mercy either. I know you two are intimate, but she is prone to wagging her tongue, that one. For now, this is between you and me until told otherwise. Agreed?”

Freya nodded. “Yes, sir!” she said, breathless, and left the room.

The next morning, Freya woke to a drumbeat in her chest. Mercy snored softly, her blond hair falling over her face, her scarred hand dangling off her rope bed. There was just the faintest hint of light beyond the small, darkly tinted windows.

Freya rose, lit a candle, dressed, retrieved the bread from the oven, and put her bed away. She took a moment by the hearth and said her prayers. She prayed that the Putnam household be kept safe and continue to prosper. Then she asked that she see Nate most expediently, that same day if possible. She finished her prayers with a rushed “Amen.”

Outside in the moist darkness her senses were assaulted by the scent of blooming wisteria. The vines with their grapelike flowers twined up the awning on the side of the wooden house along which she groped for her way in the dark.

Ever since her discovery in the lean-to when she had first churned the butter just by thinking it, she had begun to rise early before anyone else on the farm. She needed this time alone each day to continue to practice her skills. Today she wanted an even earlier start so she might eventually steal away to the woods and perhaps happen upon Nate once more. She believed he would accept her talents. He was kind and learned; he would not cast her out for being what she was. His friend James had not judged her when her touch had healed Annie’s ankle by the river.

Besides, when she practiced her skills, she felt almost dizzy with an intense joy at the power of her talent. Perhaps what she was doing
was
witchcraft, the occult, magic—all considered odious, wicked, abominable, the insidious design of the devil. That was what everyone believed. But did that make it true? Freya
didn’t think so. It felt good and pure and wholesome. What she was doing would brand her as a witch and get her hanged, but it was beyond her control. It came so naturally, and she couldn’t help herself. She needed to do it more and more.

She rushed to the cowshed. She could barely see the path in the grass. Inside, she moved quickly about because she had learned to feel her way around by now. She wended through the large, shifting bovine bodies. Without her having to use her hands, the cows began to splash steamy streams of milk inside the buckets she had placed beneath their teats.