Page 34 of The Heart of Bennet Hollow

Snow whispered against the window. Lizbeth listened to its soft murmur as beside her, Jayne hummed a Christmas carol along with Maryanne’s pounding at the piano.

The music marched up the stairwell and into their room.

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” sounded rusty from the old piano, but the addition was merry.

Lizbeth raised her embroidery hoop nearer to the window and slid a needle and thread through.

The rich purple strand was one she had simmered with blackberries the summer before, thanks to Ma’s guiding hand, and now the cheery color somehow chased away the cold.

Lizbeth’s rocking chair creaked as she stitched the next petal in the sampler’s ornate border.

.. trying once again to think about something other than William.

It had been two months since he and the Pemberley departed New River.

A churning of steel wheels on tracks. Determined and absolute.

Lizbeth squinted at her stitches. Best to focus instead on the need to finish this sampler. By doing so, she might earn a little income for her family, which had become the cry of her heart—and Pa’s—ever since they’d gotten the news of the tax issue with the land.

The same news William may have been alluding to. And Mr. Westgard.

Yet which caution was right?

Following William’s departure, Pa had explained to the family that they owed taxes on the land, which he’d learned in the formal letter Mr. Jorgensen had sent him the day Lizbeth had watched the shadows cross his face.

And now, if they had any hope of keeping the acreage that was Bennet Hollow, nearly two hundred dollars was owed to the state of Virginia.

An insurmountable sum, so with every stitch, Lizbeth ached to find the right ways to help.

With Christmas just days away, this should be a time for warm hearts and joyous spirits.

Instead, she awoke each morning to the memory of William’s face.

To the shadows of regret and confusion. All sharper than the icicles dangling from the eaves.

William’s words filled her mind again and she pinched the thought off before it could continue.

Before the memory became clear as it often did.

His face—his heart—before her in all the clarity a man could possibly give.

A man she had turned away. Who had left, as was right.

She feared the thorny stem of frustration within her was born from the seed of pride and misjudgment.

How wrong she now felt. How she wished to step back in time and speak with grace instead of prejudice against William Drake.

She wasn’t so naive as to not have thought about how he could have helped her family financially.

That he could have been the key to her family keeping this farm—but would it have been right to accept a man she hadn’t loved all for the sake of survival? And now? What did she think of him?

Sighing, Lizbeth centered her mind on the linen pulled tight in her wooden hoop.

“The sampler looks nearly finished.” Jayne admired it from beside her. “It’s ever so pretty, Lizzy.”

“Thank you.” She read the forming verse, all wrapped in curling vines along with a moon and series of delicate stars.

The night is far spent,

the day is at hand:

let us therefore cast off the works of darkness,

and let us...

She’d pierced each doubt one by one into the needlepoint, hoping that the words forming would somehow guide her in grace and wisdom.

“I figured that once it’s finished, I might try and sell it to a shop in one of the nearby towns.

” She’d heard of samplers this detailed selling for nearly ten dollars at a shop in Raleigh.

If she could focus, and not make mistakes, then she could give the earnings to Pa.

Scissors in hand, Jayne trimmed off the edge of an old tablecloth from the attic.

“Are your Christmas gifts nearly finished?” Lizbeth asked.

Jayne snipped a rogue thread. “Just about. This one’s for Lacey.” She held up what would soon be stuffed as a little pillow. “I’m hoping it will cheer her up.”

Lizbeth couldn’t deny that Lacey had been glum ever since Westgard’s leaving, the same time as William’s. “It’ll be perfect under the tree.”

“Right next to the socks you darned for Pa and the new candles that Maryanne dipped from beeswax.”

Lizbeth smiled, wishing it would truly feel like Christmas. But it didn’t. Not with some of the very people on her heart so far from here. Dare she admit that to Jayne?

“If only I could send a gift along for Hattie,” Lizbeth mused to keep from thinking of a certain man again. “Especially now that the new Mrs. Coburn has moved on to Pennsylvania.”

As for the sampler, she would have to part with it. For some reason, she didn’t feel ready. Somehow it seemed meant for her. A guiding hope of sorts when the rest of her world felt muddled. Much by her own doing.

William’s face came to mind again—quiet and pained—and Lizbeth peered out the window to try and shake the memory from view. To try and dislodge it from her very soul. She hadn’t succeeded yet and was beginning to worry that she wasn’t meant to.

With a whoosh , an envelope slid under the closed door, followed by Kit’s voice. “Ma and I fetched the mail!”

Jayne rose from the floor and tiptoed across trimmings of paper and ribbon. Her reach for the letter was slow, just as it had been for two months now. Whenever mail arrived, Lizbeth held her breath.

“Is it from...” She couldn’t bring herself to say Callum Brydolf .

Jayne shook her head regardless.

From downstairs, Maryanne hit a clumsy crescendo on the piano keys.

Jayne lifted the envelope, veiling any disappointment. “It’s for you, Lizzy. From Hattie.”

The song reached its end, and in the silence, Lizbeth rose from her rocking chair. The spool of blackberry-dyed thread tumbled to the floorboards.

“Thank you.” She took the envelope and turned it over in her hand.

Mrs. Hattie Coburn, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

This letter was one of many from Hattie, whereas Jayne had received nothing from Callum in the post.

“I’m sorry, Jayne.”

“Please don’t be. I haven’t been expectin’ mail.”

The rocking chair creaked as Lizbeth sat again and pulled her knees up. Her skirt and woolen petticoat billowed around her ankles, where her own stockings were also in need of a few stitches.

Slowly and softly, Maryanne began “Auld Lang Syne.” Music filled the spaces that words couldn’t.

A soft touch broke the letter’s seal. “Have you thought of writing to Callum once more?” Lizbeth asked.

Jayne’s scissors spliced through more fabric. “I’ve no plans to.”

“May I ask why?”

“Quite simple.” Snip. Snip. “I’ve written to him three times and haven’t received anythin’ in return. It’d be foolish to try again.”

“Somethin’s amiss. He’d write to you. Could it be that the address was mismarked?”

“I checked it each time.” From where she sat, Jayne’s blue eyes made a silent reckoning with a basket beneath her bed that held the tokens Callum had left behind for her—wrapped in paper and tied with string.

The same day that William had delivered the package, Lizbeth had stood in awe as Jayne opened each of Callum’s offerings: sheets upon sheets of the finest writing paper, crisp linen envelopes, a silver pen and matching inkwell, as well as two dozen four-cent stamps with President Grant’s likeness.

Jayne’s face had flushed almost as dark as the rust-colored stamps when she’d finished opening the gift.

In the weeks that followed, Lizbeth had witnessed Jayne pen each letter with care beside the light of their bedroom window.

Jayne’s eyes drifting often to the horizon and her face full of optimism as she’d written to Callum of the weather that cooler months rustled up, the quiet happenings of New River, and to thank him for the kindness he’d shown.

Jayne had even asked him about news from Vermont.

Not a single letter arrived in return.

Jayne set her scissors aside. “So, there’s no cause to carry on about it. What’s settled is settled and I’m content.”

“Jayne.”

“I mean it. Please don’t fret. I’m perfectly happy and am certain Callum is as well. He’s got an awful lot to do in Vermont, I’m sure.”

“Then why’d he leave you the package? Why leave behind one of the most beautiful pens either of us has ever seen? Why nearly a dollar’s worth of stamps?”

“The man has wealth. These are mere trifles to him. Inconsequentials that lived in his desk. He could purchase a hundred more pens at the snap of his finger. Two hundred—”

“I don’t believe a word of it and you can’t either.” Lizbeth moved to the basket and fetched the pen, wrought in elegant silver and carved with filigree. She turned the pen so the engraving glinted in sunlight.

C.B. Callum Brydolf.

A man didn’t part with his own name as easily as Jayne implied.

“ This held value to him. As did you. That’s the message he intended to send.”

Jayne took the pen and returned it to the darkness of the basket beneath her bed. Without another word, she resumed her seat on the floor.

Lizbeth pressed on. “He left you those things to make it easy for you to write him. Maybe the cost isn’t so great in light of his wealth, but it was a cost of intention ... an unspoken declaration.”

Tears pooled in Jayne’s eyes.

“ That’s what was important to him. He wanted to hear from you. To hear your voice. Leastways, to know you held these things in your hands. Make no mistake.”

“Then can you explain why he hasn’t written back?”

No, she couldn’t. “There’s gotta be more to this than what it seems.” The past two months had been teaching her this.

A humbling she didn’t know how to fully reckon with, but it began by realizing that she only knew part of the story and that there were better and more noble ways of discerning the rest.