LITMIR.BIZ

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stepfather, dear.”

      You know that’s not what I’m asking, Jane thought, but what she said was, “I mean, how do you know him?”

      “Harry was a friend of Papa’s. His father was a wealthy trader. When Harry was a young man, he met Isabella’s mother on a journey across the border. He married her and stayed in her country for several years. I met her once, when they came to the city for Harry’s mother’s funeral,” she said in a low tone, as though talking to herself. Jane moved closer to hear. “She was a lovely thing. I never saw a man so besotted.” She shook her head and paused. “Isabella was very young at that time, but already she resembled her mother greatly. Harry moved back here with Isabella after his wife died, and I’ve seen him several times in the city since then.”

      The hens scratched in the dirt, seeking the last kernels.

      “Why did you marry him?” Tears stung Jane’s eyes. “Things were fine until now, with just you and me and Maude.”

      “Jane! How dare you question me—how dare you?”

      “Sorry,” Jane muttered. She kicked at the dirt, revealing a bug that a chicken instantly pounced on. She knew she should stop, but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you love him, Mamma? Do you love him the way you...” The way you loved Papa, she wanted to say, but she didn’t dare.

      Mamma didn’t answer. She looked at Jane with an expression that was hard to read. Sorrow? Irritation? Finally, she said, “There are many ways to love, and no way to explain them to someone who hasn’t felt them. There’s one’s first love, and there’s the love you feel for your children. Wait until you have your own children, Jane, and you’ll know why I would do anything—anything to keep you girls safe and happy.”

      “But—”

      “No, let me finish. I will say this once, and then you will never ask me again. Harry loves his daughter as I love you, and we love each other the way old friends do. He has no more family. He wants his daughter to have a respected name, and I want you girls to be out in society. He has...” She hesitated. Say it, Mamma, Jane thought. Say he has money. But money was one of the subjects that Mamma considered indelicate. They watched the hens gather the chicks under their wings as a hawk flew overhead. “We should have more help in the house—”

      More help? Jane thought sourly.

      “—and you should be going to parties and meeting young men and...” Mamma sighed.

      “We don’t need him, Mamma,” Jane said. “You have Maude and me, and Hannah Herb-Woman.” Still, the idea of meeting young men interested her more than she liked to admit. How could she ever meet someone, living far away from town and never going anywhere except church? She had never been invited to a party, and the thought of guests seeing their decayed ballroom was ridiculous. And even if she did meet someone, any man who lived up to Mamma’s standards would never be interested in a tall, gawky girl with work-hardened arms and a face darkened by the sun, especially one with no dowry and no fortune to inherit. But of course she couldn’t say that to Mamma.

      “Hannah and her family are good and honest neighbors, but they are not our friends, Jane. They are not of our station. You know that.”

      It irritated Jane when Mamma talked about their “station” as though nothing had changed since her own girlhood. “We see the villagers every month in church.” Sometimes it seemed like they knew too many people, not too few. In the summer, they saw someone almost every week. Jane couldn’t imagine wanting more company than that.

      Mamma shook her head. “Those are not the kind of people I grew up with, and not the kind of people I want you to grow up with.”

      “The people you grew up with aren’t here anymore. They all moved to the city.” It was an old argument, and one that Mamma always refused to answer. Jane went on stubbornly. “And if they were here, I wouldn’t want to grow up with them. I like Hugh and Hannah and the people in the village.” What had been so wonderful about the past, to make Mamma cling to it so?

      “You should be going to parties and meeting young men and—” Mamma said again.

      “And getting married,” Jane finished for her. Mamma nodded. Of course she and Maude had to get married one day. Mamma said it was because that was what a lady did; Jane knew that they had no other way to live. Maude had begged to be allowed to learn healing and herb lore from Hannah. Hannah had been willing, as she no longer had a daughter to whom she could pass on her knowledge. Jane could sew better than any seamstress in the village—as well as some in the city, she thought, after seeing their work on city-made gowns that ladies wore to church. But Mamma would not hear of either one of them working for pay.

      “And I want you to have a father. You and Maude did not have much luck with your real father, and Harry is so gentle. He does not drink, either.” Mamma’s voice was bitter.

      Jane thought, We don’t need a father.

      “And you two must set an example—” Mamma ignored the exasperated sound that Jane could not help making “—and be good, obedient girls.”

      “Yes, Mamma.” Jane tried not to let her irritation show again. Wasn’t she getting too old to need her mother to tell her to be a good, obedient girl? She had already turned fifteen; Mamma had been married at sixteen.

      A few chickens followed them hopefully to the back door, where Isabella stood, her bare feet poking out from under her white nightdress. She looked no more than ten years old, with her golden hair loose about her shoulders. “Where is my father?”

      “Good morning, Isabella,” Mamma said, and she nudged Jane, who repeated reluctantly, “Good morning.”

      “Good morning,” Isabella said, with an obvious effort, and then she asked again, “Where is my father?”

      “Your father is still asleep,” Mamma answered. “You may wake him, if you like.”

      It was late, and the cow and goats would be uncomfortably full of milk. Jane hurried to the barn, which was familiar and calming after the strange, awkward-feeling parlor with those two new people inside it. Even when the house had fallen into disrepair, they had kept the barn sound and dry. Here the wood was solid, and instead of odors of mold and decay, she was bathed in the warm, living smells of healthy animals and clean hay.

      The big door was open to the fenced-in field, letting in the morning sunlight and the rapidly warming air. A few flies buzzed, and the spiders crouched in their webs, ready to run out and wrap up anything that flew into their traps.

      Baby shifted her heavy weight from one foot to another and swished her tail against her rump. The two new horses poked their brown noses through the bars of their stall, and she gave each a rub. “At least you’re friendly.” She laughed when they tossed their heads as though nodding in agreement.

      She always tended to Sal first. The old gray hunter didn’t look like much now, but in his day he had been famous. “Like Lady Margaret taking a fence on Saladin,” people in the village still said, when they meant that someone had done something in a particularly fine way. His back was swayed now, and his eyes were dim, but when the girls blew one of the rusted hunting horns that hung in the nearly empty tack room, his neck would arch and he would paw the ground, and they could see a shadow of what he had once been.

      “Good boy.” She rubbed Sal’s hard forehead between the ears as he ate. An impatient moo broke in on her thoughts, and she pulled the milking stool and bucket over to Baby.

      Betsy and her puppies must have just woken up, and the fat little bodies squirmed over one another to get their breakfast. Betsy saw Jane looking at her and thumped her tail. Jane poured a little milk in the bowl that one of the puppies was blindly trying to climb out of, and Betsy lapped it up. Jane milked the goats next and then fed all the livestock. While they ate she mucked out the stalls and scattered a handful of straw over the floor. She drove Baby and the goats out to the pasture.

      She was about to go back to the

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