“Now be honest. And call me ‘Margaret.’”
“Well, it is unusual. Flattering but, well, Margaret, you catch me off my guard.”
“Good, I meant to, for I am secretly quite rude.” She smiled again, winning, open. “I’ll wager you have more spirit in you than you like to admit. Quite a labor, keeping the horses in check, is it not?”
“The turban is breathtaking, and your hair, so bold.”
She leaned toward me as if we were young girls sharing gossip. “You are prevaricating, dear. Would you say it is ‘wenchy’?”
“Oh, not at all. Well. If I may say, it is rather savage.”
She laughed. “Good. My husband adores it, though in public he criticizes me roundly for it. All the while, see there, he looked again. All the while he complains, he is stoking up the fires for later.”
I blushed deeply.
“Oh, how attractive your color becomes when you are alarmed so. Please do call upon me. I could not bear it if you refuse.”
“I shall.”
“Send your man around to my house in the morning. May we say, Tuesday afternoon tea?”
At first, I reckoned she meant Cullah, then my face dropped as I realized she meant a servant should search out her house and then direct my coachman to it. Had I a coachman. Or a servant. “I will be there.”
“Bring your daughter if you’d like. She’s charming.”
*
Margaret Gage and I became friends within a couple of weeks. I called at her house, which was not as grand as I expected it to be, and she called upon me, as well. My home could be described as little more than a humble country house. More than a cottage, but nothing like those in Boston. She was gracious in every way, and accepted the cakes and ale or pasties and coffee I offered with aplomb. I guarded my words with her still, and I suspected she knew as much. She, on the other hand, guarded nothing from me. And one day she chided me that I did not have help in my kitchen, but did all myself. “Help in the country is harder to find. My daughters have helped.”
“You need a girl in.”
I promised her I would think about that, and later, when I was helping Gwyneth shell some pease, I mentioned it to her. Within a week, with no explanation other than “it seems the right thing to do,” Dorothy moved home. She put her things in Gwyneth’s old room at the front of the house. I was so happy I sang the day through, though neither she nor Gwenny would admit to their having talked about it. I did not like the idea that my daughters would speak around my knowledge, but at last I accepted it as their having grown so close during the last years.
After the sun set the next Sunday, a wind came up. We were preparing for bed when I heard a strange bird calling outside. It called again. A few minutes later there was a knock at the back of the house. Cullah went outside and around the house. In a few minutes, I heard cartwheels crushing gravel in the road, and the clomping step of a heavy horse. It went past the house and toward the barn. The sound drifted into the wind. I heard nothing for an hour, and then the parlor door swung open. Cullah held it wide. In stepped August and the man who had delivered the message to him before, their arms loaded with heavy crates.
Dolly came down the stairs. “Ma? What is wrong? Pa? Oh, uncle!”
“Get on your wrapper,” I called to her. “August Talbot, what have you? Come here by the fire. Will you have something to warm yourself? Brother, will you not introduce your friend? Come. You are welcomed also.” How joyful to see him alive!
August and Cullah exchanged looks, but finally the man said, “Call me ‘Nathaniel,’ Mistress.”
“Ressie? I have put quite a stock into your barn in that upper room. Have you a place in the house to hide a few crates? It’s going to Parker’s warehouse tomorrow night, but for now it would be better these were watched by other than geese and cows.”
“Of course.” I led him to the panel halfway down the stairs. Nathaniel crawled into the room and lit a lantern, then Cullah and August passed boxes to him.
August looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Powder cartridges and shot.”
I nodded. We gave them the remnants of our supper and filled their cups with cider. I had baked bread that day and there was plenty to fill in what the meat could not. We made up a bed for August in Benjamin’s old room, and one for Nathaniel on the pull-out stand there in the parlor. I had long ago burned the ticking upon which my Patey had slept, but we replaced it with a few blankets and he promised he would be comfortable.