“Don’t be daft, Sorrel,” Aunt Nattie spoke up unexpectedly. “The man can’t climb the loft ladder with that broken arm.”
“He needs to be close by me, so’s I can help him,” said Fawn firmly. “Dag can lay his bedroll in Nattie’s weaving room.”
“Good idea, Fawn,” said Nattie cheerily.
Fawn slept in with her aunt; the boys shared rooms upstairs, as did their parents. Papa Bluefield looked as though he was thinking hard, suddenly, about the implications of leaving Fawn and Dag downstairs with a blind chaperone.
And then—inevitably—of the implications of how long Dag and Fawn had been on the road together. Did he know anything about his aging sister-in-law’s groundsense?
“I’ll try harder not to cut your throat with your razor tomorrow, Dag,” Fawn said.
“I’ve lost more blood for less,” he assured her.
“We should likely try to get on the road early.”
“What?” said Papa Bluefield, coming out of his frowning cogitation. “You’re not going anywhere, girl!”
She turned to him, stiffening up tight. “I told you first thing, Papa. I have an obligation to give witness.”
“Are you stupid, Fawn!”
Dag caught his breath at the hard black rip through Fawn’s ground; his eyes went to Nattie, but she gave no visible reaction, though her face was turned toward the pair.
Papa Bluefield went on, “Your obligations are here, for all you’ve run off and turned your back on them this past month! You’ve had enough gallivanting for a while, believe you me!”
Dag interposed quietly and quite truthfully, “Actually, Spark, my arm’s not doing all that well tonight. I wouldn’t mind a day or two to rest up.”
She turned anxious eyes up at him, as if not sure whether she was hearing support or betrayal. He gave her a small, reassuring nod.
Papa Bluefield gave Dag a sideways look. “You’d be welcome to go on, if you’ve a need.” “Papa!” snapped Fawn, gyrating back to something not strained show, but blazingly sincere. “The idea! Dag saved my life three times, twice at great risk to his own, once from the bandits, once from the malice—the bogle—and once again the night after the bogle… hurt me, because I would have bled to death right there in the woods if he hadn’t helped me. I will not have him turned out on the road by himself with two bad arms! For shame! Shame on this house if you dare!”
She actually stamped her foot; the parlor floor sounded like a drum.
Papa Bluefield had stepped backward. His wife was staring at Dag with eyes wide, holding the glass bowl tightly. Nattie… was amazingly hard to read, but she had a strange little smile on her lips.
“Oh.” Papa Bluefield cleared his throat. “You hadn’t exactly made that plain, Fawn.”
Fawn said wearily, “How could I? No one would let me finish a story without telling me I must be making things up.”
Her father glanced at Dag. “He’s a quiet one.”
Dag could not touch his temple; he had to settle for a short nod. “Thinking.
Sir.”
“Are you, now?”
It was not, in the Bluefield household, apparently possible to finish a debate.
But when the squabbling finally died into assorted mumblings, drifting away up stairs or down halls in the dark, Dag ended up with his bedroll set down beside Aunt Nattie’s loom, with an impressive pile of quilts and pillows arranged for his ease. He could hear the shortest two women of the family rustling around in the bedroom beyond in low-voiced preparation for bed, and then the creak of the bed frames as they settled down.
Dag disposed his throbbing arm awkwardly, grateful for the pillows. Save for the night on the Horsefords’ kitchen floor, he had never slept inside a farmer’s house, certainly not as an invited guest, though his patrols had sometimes been put up, by arrangement, in farmers’ barns. This beat a drafty hayloft with snow sifting in all hollow. Before he’d met Fawn’s family, he would scarcely have understood why she would want to leave such comforts.
He wasn’t sure if it was worse to be loved yet not valued than valued but not loved, but surely it was better to be both. For the first time, he began to think a farm’s brightest treasure need not be furtively stolen; it might be honestly won. But the hopes forming in his mind would have to wait on tomorrow for their testing.
Chapter 14
The next morning passed quietly. To Fawn’s eye Dag looked tired, moved slowly, and said little, and she thought his arm was probably troubling him more than he let on. She found herself caught up, will or nil, in the never-ending rhythm of farm chores; cows took no holidays even for homecomings. She and Dag did take a walk around the place in the midmorning, and she pointed out the scenes and sites from her tales of childhood. But her guess about his arm was confirmed when, after lunch, he took some more of the pain powder that had helped him through yesterday’s long ride. He slipped out—wordlessly—to the front porch overlooking the river valley and sat leaning against the house wall, nursing the arm and thinking… whatever he was thinking about all this. Fawn found herself assigned to stirring apple butter in the kitchen, and while you are about it, dear, why don’t you make up some pies for supper?
She was fluting the edge of the second one and reluctantly contemplating building up the fire under the hearth oven, which would make the hot room hotter still, when Dag came in.
“Drink?” she guessed.
“Please…”
She held the water ladle to his lips; when he’d drained it, he added, “There’s a young fellow who’s tethered his horse in your front woods. I believe he imagines he’s sneaking up the hill in secret. His ground seems pretty unsettled, but I don’t think he’s a house robber.”
“Did you see him?” she asked, then halted, considering what an absurd question that sounded if you didn’t know Dag. And then how well she had come to know Dag, that it should fall so readily from her lips.
“Just a glimpse.”
“Was he bright blond?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Sunny Sawman. I’ll bet Clover told folks that I’m back, and he’s come to see for himself if it’s true.”
“Why not ride openly up the lane?”
She flushed a little, not that he’d likely notice in this heat, and admitted,
“He used to sneak up to steal kisses from me that way, from time to time. He was afraid of my brothers finding out, I think.”
“Well, he’s afraid of something.” He hesitated. “Do you want me to stay?”
She tilted her head, frowning. “I better talk to him alone. He won’t be truthful if he’s in front of anyone.” She glanced up uneasily at him. “Maybe… don’t go far?”
He nodded; she didn’t seem to need to explain further. He stepped into Aunt Nattie’s weaving room, flanking the kitchen, and set the door open. She heard him dragging a chair behind it, and the creak of wood and possibly of Dag as he settled into it.
A few moments later, footsteps sounded on the porch, attempted tiptoe; they paused outside the kitchen window above the drainboard. She stepped up and stared without pleasure at Sunny’s face, craning around and peering in. He jerked back as he saw her, then whispered, “Are you alone?”
“For now.”
He nodded and nipped in through the back door. She regarded him, testing her feelings. Straw-gold hair still curled around his head in soft locks, his eyes were still bright blue, his skin fair and fine and summer-flushed, his shoulders broad, his muscular arms, tanned where his sleeves were rolled up, coated with a shimmer of gold hairs that had always seemed to make him gleam in sunlight.
His physical charm was unchanged, and she wondered how it was that she was now so wholly unmoved by it, who had once trembled beneath it in a wheatfield in such wild, flattered elation.
His daughter would have been a pretty girl. The thought twisted in her like a knife, and she fought to set it aside.
“Where is everyone?” he asked cautiously, looking around again.
“Papa and the boys are up cutting hay, Mama is out giving the chickens a dusting with that antilice powder she got from your uncle, and Aunt Nattie’s bad knee hurt so she went to lie down after lunch.”