“Will, you too,” Aunt Kennedy said. “Say good night before you drive back to the farm. I don’t like the idea of you traipsing alone in the dark.”
“Yes, Aunt Kennedy,” Will said. “I promise, after I make sure Maud gets home safe.”
There was a pause and shuffling from the house. “Very well. But be quick!”
“I won’t be long,” he said to Laura.
“I doubt that,” she muttered, and then hugged and kissed Maud. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Taking Maud’s arm, Will led her the ten steps or so between the houses. Pausing at the gate, he stood in front of her. The sunset’s glow washed against Father’s gate.
“I wish we were a little older and settled. Maybe then things would be different.”
“It is a nice dream,” Maud said, knowing, deep down, that her future involved education and writing, something altogether different than what Will was imagining. But she loved his version too. Why wasn’t there a way she could have both?
“I’ve been thinking,” he began, then broke off. He smiled sadly and took both her hands, tracing her palm with his index finger; she shivered in the warm air and stared at the golden earth. “How much I’ve enjoyed our drives together and how much I loathe them to end.”
She loved the feeling of their hands together, the poet and the farmer.
“We can’t do anything about that right now,” she said.
“That’s true,” he said. “So I will have to keep you…close.”
“You must promise me something first,” she said.
“Anything.” His hand caressed her chin, lifting her face up.
She almost couldn’t speak. He was so beautiful. She took his hand away from her face, but didn’t let it go. “I’ve told you about Nate.”
She expected his expression to darken, as it had when she’d mentioned the cipher, but all Will did was silently watch her.
“We were friends, and things—well—fell apart, and they’ve never been the same,” she said. “I believed I loved him, but I think it was that I was so happy to have someone love me, I dreamed myself into believing it.”
“And with me?” He stepped forward.
“With you.” She swallowed. “With you, everything is different.”
“Maud…I…”
She took a deep breath. “Promise me we’ll never despise each other.”
“I could never despise you, Maud.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise that I will never despise you. Besides”—he smiled—“I don’t think my sister would allow it.”
She giggled.
“I think I’m going to need to inspect this ring a little more,” he said, raising his finger.
Maud couldn’t look away from the ring—her ring!—around his finger. “Again, I ask: How long do you expect to need it?”
He leaned in. “As long as you’ll let me.”
It was different from kissing Nate. Will’s kisses were tender, but more confident. He kissed her once, softly, and then again and again. She leaned into him, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. She shivered. It scared her, but being here with him was like coming home, and she allowed him to kiss her neck, her cheek, her throat, her lips.
She leaned her head against his chest. They fit together so well.
Will rubbed her back, and she dared to look up at him and looped her arms around his neck. “Take good care of my ring,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Maud and Will were as discreet as possible. And, as Laura would say, Providence provided many opportunities for them to meet. There was Bible Study at the manse and, as Will predicted, now that the weather was getting warmer, there were picnics almost every weekend. Maud still hadn’t heard from Grandma, so she decided that she might as well enjoy what time she had left. And what better way than with people she adored.
One of the trustees, Mr. McArthur, held a special picnic on his ranch to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. The ranch was twelve miles out of town, and Maud drove out with Lottie, Alexena, and Dr. and Mrs. Stovel over a beautiful trail. Mrs. Montgomery had one of her headaches, so Father stayed home with her.
“Have you been working on your writing, Maud?” Dr. Stovel asked from the front seat. Since her publication in the Charlottetown Patriot, he was always asking what she was writing.
“I have been reworking a poem I started in Cavendish called ‘June,’?” Maud said.
“Marvelous,” he said.
“I don’t know how you do it, Maud,” Lottie said. “Words don’t come to me easily. I sometimes have a hard time writing a letter.”
“Maybe it is who you are writing it to,” Alexena said. “I know there are people whom I don’t care to write to and my letters to them are dull. But then there are others…”
“Such as Frank?” Lottie teased.
“Perhaps,” Alexena said, picking an imaginary piece of dirt off her sleeve. “But that is not who I meant.”
“Ladies,” Mrs. Stovel said. “It isn’t appropriate to talk about these matters, particularly around Dr. Stovel.”
Alexena was about to open her mouth in retort when Maud interjected. “I think the poem on June is almost ready to send for publication.”
“I would love to read it,” Dr. Stovel said.
“Dr. Stovel scribbles a bit himself,” Mrs. Stovel said.
“My wife is much too kind,” he said. “I dabble in what some might call writing, but I have no aspirations.”
“I’m sure that isn’t so,” Maud said. “Truthfully, I rarely share anything with anyone before I think it is ready.” It was rare she could find someone to discuss writing with anyway.
When they arrived, Maud, Lottie, and Alexena helped Mrs. Stovel set up her basket, and then Maud went looking for Laura and Will. She found them helping their mother set up her basket, with a number of their siblings running around. Mrs. Pritchard had the same kind eyes as Laura, and had given Will her sturdy chin; she appeared exhausted, but she had a pleasant smile.
Maud helped the siblings finish unpacking the last of the luncheon. She and Will had decided to take a long walk when Dr. Stovel came over, insisting they join in on a baseball game. Maud hadn’t played sports in a long time and she was rusty and winded quickly, but it felt good to run and focus on winning a simple game of ball, rather than wondering about what would happen to her if Grandma and Grandfather Macneill wouldn’t take her. Would she have to rely on one of her other cousins? Depend on their charity? It was so frustrating to wait, but there was little else she could do.
After the game, Maud was on her way to find refreshments with Will, Laura, and Dr. Stovel when J.D. Maveety, the editor of the Prince Albert Times, approached them. The three friends saw this as a good opportunity to go off on their own, but the editor stopped Maud and said, “I was thoroughly impressed with the way you conducted yourself at the Reverend’s manse on Sunday, Miss Montgomery.” Maud smiled. She had led the Bible Study the previous week for the second time, choosing Timothy 4:12, the same verse that had inspired her last year at the Reverend Mr. Carruthers’s lecture.