He thrust them out, and she saw a small, folded envelope tucked amongst them.
“Susan?” Aunt Cord’s voice, from around the side of the house . . . and getting closer. “Susan, did I hear the gate?”
“Yes, Aunt!” she called back. Curse the woman’s sharp ears! Susan nimbly plucked the envelope from its place among the phlox and daisies. Into her dress pocket it went.
“They from my third-best friend,” Sheemie said. “I got three different friends now.
This many.” He held up two fingers, frowned, added two more, and then grinned splendidly. “Arthur Heath my first-best friend, Dick Stockworth my second-best friend. My third-best friend—”
“Hush!” Susan said in a low, fierce voice that made Sheemie’s smile fade. “Not a word about your three friends.”
A funny little flush, almost like a pocket fever, raced across her skin—it seemed to run down her neck from her cheeks, then slip all the way to her feet. There had been a lot of talk in Hambry about Sheemie’s new friends during the past week—talk about little else, it seemed. The stories she had heard were outlandish, but if they weren’t true, why did the versions told by so many different witnesses sound so much alike?
Susan was still trying to get herself back under control when Aunt Cord swept around the comer. Sheemie fell back a step at the sight of her, puzzlement becoming outright dismay. Her aunt was allergic to beestings, and was presently
swaddled from the top of her straw ‘brera to the hem of her faded garden dress in gauzy stuff that made her look peculiar in strong light and downright eerie in shade. Adding a final touch to her costume, she carried a pair of dirt-streaked garden shears in one gloved hand.
She saw the bouquet and bore down on it, shears raised. When she reached her niece, she slid the scissors into a loop on her belt (almost reluctantly, it seemed to the niece herself) and parted the veil on her face. “Who sent ye those?”
“I don’t know. Aunt,” Susan said, much more calmly than she felt. “This is the young man from the inn—”
“Inn!” Aunt Cord snorted.
“He doesn’t seem to know who sent him,” Susan carried on. If only she could get him out of here! “He’s, well, I suppose you’d say he’s—”
“He’s a fool, yes, I know that.” Aunt Cord cast Susan a brief, irritated look, then bent her attention on Sheemie. Talking with her gloved hands upon her knees, shouting directly into his face, she asked: “WHO . . . SENT . . . THESE . . .
FLOWERS . . . YOUNG… MAN? ”
The wings of her face-veil, which had been pushed aside, now fell back into place.
Sheemie took another step backward. He looked frightened.
“WAS IT . . . PERHAPS . . . SOMEONE FROM… SEAFRONT? . . . FROM . . .
MAYOR . . . THORIN? . . . TELL …ME… AND . . . I’LL . . . GIVE… YOU . . . A PENNY. ”
Susan’s heart sank, sure he would tell—he’d not have the wit to understand he’d be getting her into trouble. Will, too, likely.
But Sheemie only shook his head. “Don’t ‘member. I got a empty head, sai, so I do.
Stanley says I a bugwit.”
His grin shone out again, a splendid thing full of white, even teeth. Aunt Cord answered it with a grimace. “Oh, foo! Be gone, then. Straight back to town, too—don’t be hanging around hoping for a goose-feather. For a boy who can’t remember deserves not so much as a penny! And don’t you come back here again, no matter who wants you to carry flowers for the young sai. Do you hear me?”
Sheemie had nodded energetically. Then: “Sai?”
Aunt Cord glowered at him. The vertical line on her forehead had been very prominent that day.
“Why you all wropped up in cobwebbies, sai?”
“Get out of here, ye impudent cull!” Aunt Cord cried. She had a good loud voice when she wanted to use it, and Sheemie jumped back from her in alarm. When she was sure he was headed back down the High Street toward town and had no intention of returning to their gate and hanging about in hopes of a tip, Aunt Cord had turned to Susan.
“Get those in some water before they wilt, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty, and don’t go mooning about, wondering who yer secret admirer might be.”
Then Aunt Cord had smiled. A real smile. What hurt Susan the most, confused her the most, was that her aunt was no cradle-story ogre, no witch like Rhea of the Coos. There was no monster here, only a maiden lady with some few social pretensions, a love of gold and silver, and a tear of being turned out, penniless, into the world.
“For folks such as us, Susie-pie,” she said, speaking with a terrible heavy kindness, ” ’tis best to stick to our housework and leave dreams to them as can afford them.”
5
She had been sure the flowers were from Will, and she was right. His note was written in a hand which was clear and passing fair.
Dear Susan Delgado,
I spoke out of turn the other night, and cry your pardon. May I see you and speak to you? It must be private. This is a matter of importance. If you will see me, get a message to the boy who brings this. He is safe.
Will Dearborn
A matter of importance. Underlined. She felt a strong desire to know what was so important to him, and cautioned herself against doing anything foolish. Perhaps he was smitten with her … and if so, whose fault was that? Who had talked to him, ridden his horse, showed him her legs in a flashy carnival dismount? Who had put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him?
Her cheeks and forehead burned at the thought of that, and another hot ring seemed to go slipping down her body. She wasn’t sure she regretted the kiss, but it had been a mistake, regrets or no regrets. Seeing him again now would be a worse one.
Yet she wanted to see him, and knew in her deepest heart that she was ready to set her anger at him aside. But there was the promise she had made.
The wretched promise.
That night she lay sleepless, tossing about in her bed, first thinking it would be better, more dignified, just to keep her silence, then composing mental notes anyway—some haughty, some cold, some with a lace-edge of flirtation.
When she heard the midnight bell ring, passing the old day out and calling the new one in, she decided enough was enough. She’d thrown herself from her bed, gone to her door, opened it, and thrust her head out into the hall. When she heard Aunt Cord’s flutelike snores, she had closed her door again, crossed to her little desk by the window, and lit her lamp. She took one of her sheets of parchment paper from the top drawer, tore it in half (in Hambry, the only crime greater than wasting paper was wasting threaded stockline), and then wrote quickly, sensing that the slightest hesitation might condemn her to more hours of indecision. With no salutation and no signature, her response took only a breath to write: I may not see you. ‘Twould not be proper.
She had folded it small, blew out her lamp, and returned to bed with the note safely tucked under her pillow. She was asleep in two minutes. The following day, when the marketing took her to town, she had gone by the Travellers’ Rest, which, at eleven in the morning, had all the charm of something which has died badly at the side of the road.
The saloon’s door-yard was a beaten dirt square bisected by a long hitching rail with a watering trough beneath. Sheemie was trundling a wheelbarrow along the rail, picking up last night’s horse-droppings with a shovel. He was wearing a comical pink sombrero, and singing “Golden Slippers.” Susan doubted if many of the Rest’s patrons would wake up feeling as well as Sheemie obviously did this morning … so who, when you came right down to it, was more soft-headed?
She looked around to make sure no one was paying heed to her, then went over to
Sheemie and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked frightened at first, and Susan didn’t blame him—according to the stories she’d been hearing, Jonas’s friend Depape had almost killed the poor kid for spilling a drink on his boots.
Then Sheemie recognized her. “Hello, Susan Delgado from out there by the edge of town,” he said companionably. “It’s a good day I wish you, sai.”
He bowed—an amusing imitation of the Inner Baronies bow favored by his three new friends. Smiling, she dropped him a bit of curtsey (wearing jeans, she had to pretend at the skirt-holding part, but women in Mejis got used to curtseying in pretend skirts).