The harvest season meant harder work than any of us—save perhaps Glover—had ever known in our lives. Opal and Father bore it stoically and Pearl, ill-temperedly, while the boys complained without surcease and yet did their fair share of the work.
I loved it. I had no idea why, but I did: the relentless effort of bending and picking and digging and packing felt wonderful. I learned to make jam from wild berries, puckering my mouth when they were tart and wondering if we might grow sugar beets with any success over the next season. The jams and parsnips and carrots and dried meats went into the cellar, where it remained cool all the year around, and before winter came on we picked apples and pears from the trees that had proven to bear them. I pickled tomatoes and sweated over rose hip jelly, stored beans and traded for spices, and, remembering my sisters' love of perfumes back when we could afford such things, delved into one of the books Glover had brought. There I found recipes for rose water and amber toilets. I conspired with Glover, who brought me vials for the perfumes, and I brewed them in the barn, where my sisters rarely went. The boys, who often ventured there, were sworn to secrecy, and, as they clearly had secrets of their own, did a fair job of keeping them.
I was leaving the barn one afternoon just before the winter equinox when I caught a glimpse of Glover standing unusually idle in the garden. We had turned the soil over already, leaving it ready for next spring's planting, and there was little enough left to be done there. Curious, I went to hail him, then saw that from where he stood, he could gaze unimpeded through the rose window in the house, yet barely be seen from indoors. I knew without error where his attention lay: on Opal, who had set a small loom near the window, and was learning the craft.
His expression was not fatuous, but soft, and I suddenly understood why my father's manservant had been willing to help us, uncompensated, for all these months. I doubted, even then, that he intended to put himself forward: Opal, being the woman she was, would marry him out of gratitude for what he'd done for us, and his was not the face of a man who wished to be rewarded unless his lover's sentiment was as strong as his own.
And still, what a strange gift it must have seemed to him, for our family to fall on hard times that he could help us through. In the city, Opal would have remained impossibly far above his station. I wasn't proud of having often not even noticed our servants, but that I had not remained fact. At least in the world as it had become, he could earn her notice, even her friendship, which was more than he might ever have expected before. He was not so much older than she: not yet thirty, I thought, and Opal was approaching her twenty-first birthday now, after nearly a year in the lodge. The difference between Maman and Father's age was considerably greater; Maman was, I believed, barely ten years Pearl's elder, although her constant fragility made me think of her as much older. Opal could do much worse than Glover, and in a village of men either already married or not yet bearded, probably would.
I stepped back and opened the barn door again so I could close it with more vigor, its thump alerting Glover to my presence. He returned to the work he'd been pursuing—fetching wood for the fire, as it turned out—and I helped, taking a load almost as heavy as his into the lodge.
The main room was warmest, of course, and we spent most of what I advisedly thought of as our idle time in it. In truth we had vastly less idle time than we once had, and it was rarely idle at all, as evidenced by Opal's weaving and Maman's stitching, and—surprisingly—by Pearl's pouring over a book I was unfamiliar with. Father held a knife and a long piece of wood in his strong hands, pare by pare creating a board for a bedframe that would in time go into the loft, and Flint sat by the fire bent over a piece of leather that began to look like a bridle. Jasper lay on the bearskin rug with Jet and a piece of slate and chalk, practicing letters with the little one, and as Glover placed another log on the fire, an overwhelming brightness filled my eyes and chest.
"Look at us." My voice cracked and I swallowed, smiling through a tightness in my throat. Pearl looked up, white eyebrows elevated, but rolled her eyes in disdain as I continued. "Look at us. When do you last remember, in the city, us all being in a single room together, bent to our individual interests but still a family?"
Glover took a discreet step backward, toward the shadow of the kitchen door, clearly dismissing himself as part of the picture I saw, but I said, "Don't leave, Glover. You've become part of this family too. An integral part, I dare say. We would never have made it this far without you."
"Miss," Glover protested, but he smiled, and ducked his head when Opal smiled her agreement toward him.
"We've done well," I insisted. "I don't know that I would go back to what we had, even if I could."
"I would," Pearl said dryly, but Father gave me an odd, approving smile while Maman kept her attention fiercely on her stitching. The boys were entirely unmoved by my emotion, and as such, caused me to release it in a quick laugh. I went happy to my next task, and if I imagined Opal's gaze lingering thoughtfully on Glover for a few moments, I enjoyed that little dream as well.
The longest night came on us only a few days later, and I, expecting nothing, brought out the perfumes for my sisters and Maman, and new winter boots that I'd traded other vials of perfume for, for all the menfolk, including Glover, whose visible surprise was worth having snuck around the village behind his back. Then Maman, who had spent nearly a year in almost absolute silence, rose and went upstairs, only to return with warm and beautifully stitched cloaks for all of us, even—as I had done—Glover.