The Taker-Taker 1 Page 11

  I waited to meet with Jonathan at Sunday services, while again nature intervened. Several weeks elapsed before the trails into town were passable again. By then, I felt the press of time upon me: if I were forced to wait much longer, I would not be able to keep my secret to myself. I prayed during every waking moment for God to give me the opportunity to speak to Jonathan, soon.

  The Lord must have heard my prayers, for at last the winter sun came out in its fullness for several days running, melting a goodly portion of the last snowfall. Finally, that Sunday we were able to hitch up the horse, bundle ourselves in cloaks, scarves, gloves, and blankets, and pack ourselves together, tightly, in the back of the wagon for our trip into town.

  In the congregation hall, I felt conspicuous. God knew of my condition, of course, but I fancied everyone else in town did, too. I feared that my abdomen had begun to swell and all eyes were upon the unsightly bulge under my skirt—though surely it was too soon for that, and in any case it was doubtful that anyone could find anything amiss, given the layers of winter clothing. I pressed near my father and cowered behind a post throughout the service, wishing to be invisible, waiting for the opportunity to speak to Jonathan afterward.

  As soon as Pastor Gilbert dismissed us for the day, I hurried down the stairs, not waiting for my father. I stood on the last step, searching for Jonathan. He emerged, soon enough, and made his way through the crowd toward me. Without a word, I took his hand firmly and drew him behind the staircase where we’d have more privacy.

  The bold move made him nervous, and he glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone had taken notice that we’d stolen away. “Good God, Lanny, if you are thinking I should kiss you here—”

  “Listen to me. I am with child,” I blurted out.

  He dropped my hand, and his handsome face shifted through a series of expressions: shock, a flush of surprise, a creeping realization that brought on pallor. Although I hadn’t expected Jonathan to be happy with my news, his silence frightened me.

  “Jonathan, speak to me. I do not know what to do.” I tugged at his arm.

  He took a sidelong glance at me, then cleared his throat. “Dear Lanny, I am at a loss to know what to say—”

  “That is not what a girl wants to hear at a time like this!” Tears strained at my eyes. “Tell me I am not alone, tell me you will not desert me. Tell me that you will help me figure out what to do next.”

  He continued to behold me with great reluctance but said, stiffly, “You are not alone.”

  “You cannot imagine how frightened I’ve been, confined with this secret at home, unable to speak of it with anyone. I knew I had to tell you first, Jonathan. I owed you that.” Speak, speak, I willed him; tell me that you will confess your part in my downfall to our parents and that you will do right by me. Tell me that you still love me. That you will marry me. I held my breath, tears rolling down my cheeks, almost faint with wishing to hear him speak those words.

  But Jonathan could look at me no longer. His gaze fell to the floor. “Lanny, I have something I must tell you, but believe me when I say I would rather die than have to share this news with you right now.”

  I felt light-headed and a chill of fear broke over me like sweat. “What could be more important than what I have just told you—”

  “I’ve been engaged. It was settled this week. My father is in the hall making the announcement now, but I had to find you and tell you myself. I didn’t want you to hear from anyone else …” His words trailed off as he realized how little his courtesy meant to me now.

  As we were growing up, we’d sometimes made light of the fact that Jonathan had not been betrothed. This business of betrothal was difficult in a village as small as St. Andrew. The best prospective brides and husbands were snapped up early, marriages arranged for children as young as six, so if your family hadn’t acted promptly, there might not be a good choice to be had. One would think a boy of Jonathan’s means and social stature would be an attractive candidate for any of the families in town with daughters. And he was, but a match had never been made, nor for his sisters, either. Jonathan said it was due to his mother’s social aspirations: she didn’t think any family in town would be advantageous enough for her children. They would surely do better among his father’s business associates or through her own family’s network in Boston. There had been flurries of inquiries over the years, some looking more solid than others, but they all seemed to peter out and Jonathan had approached his twentieth birthday with no bride in sight.

  I felt as though my stomach had been opened with a butcher’s knife. “To whom?”

  He shook his head. “Now is not the time to speak of these things. It is your condition we should be talking about—”

  “Who is it? I demand to know,” I cried.

  There was hesitation in his eyes. “It’s one of the McDougal girls. Evangeline.”

  Even though my sisters were close to the McDougal girls, I struggled to recall which of them was Evangeline, because there was no shortage of them. The McDougals had seven daughters in all, a gaggle, all very pretty in a hardy Scots way, tall and sturdy, with ginger hair in coarse curls, and skin that freckled like copper trout in the summer. I could picture Mrs. McDougal, too, practical and good-natured, with her shrewd eye, perhaps more capable than her husband, who made a passing living as a farmer, but everyone knew it was Mrs. McDougal who made the farm turn a nice profit and had raised their standing in the town. I tried to see Jonathan with a woman like Mrs. McDougal at his side, and it made me want to fall in a heap at his feet.

  “And you intend to proceed with the engagement?” I demanded.

  “Lanny, I don’t know what to say … I don’t know that I cannot …” He took my hand and drew me back farther into a dusty corner. “The contract with the McDougals has been signed, the announcements made. I don’t know what my parents will make of our—situation.”

  I could argue with him but knew that it would be futile. Marriage was a business arrangement, meant to enhance the prosperity of both families. An opportunity such as allegiance to a family like the St. Andrews would not just be given away, not for something as common as a pregnancy out of wedlock.

  “It pains me to say this, but there would be objections to our marriage,” Jonathan said as kindly as possible. I shook my head wearily; he did not have to tell me. My father may have been respected by his neighbors for his quiet good judgment, but we McIlvraes did not have much to recommend us to prospective spouses, being poor and half the family practicing Catholics.

  After a while, I asked hoarsely, “And Evangeline—is she the one after Maureen?”

  “She’s the youngest,” Jonathan replied. Then, after hesitating, he added, “She is fourteen.”

  The youngest—I could only picture the toddler brought by her sisters when they came to visit our house and work with Maeve and Glynnis on cross-stitch samplers. She had been a small pink-white thing, a pretty doll with gossamer gold tendrils and an unfortunate tendency to cry.

  “So, the betrothal is set but the wedding date, if she is fourteen, that must be far off …”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Old Charles wants us to wed this fall, if possible. By the end of the year, without fail.”

  I gave voice to the obvious. “He is desperate for you to continue the family name.”

  Jonathan wrapped his arm around my shoulders, holding me up, and I wished to cling to his strength and warmth forever. “Tell me, Lanny, what would you have us do? Tell me and I will do my best to make it so. Do you want me to tell my parents and ask them to release me from the marriage contract?”

  A cold sadness washed over me. He said what I wanted to hear but I could tell that he was afraid of my answer. Although he had no desire to wed Evangeline, now that the inevitable had been arranged, he had reconciled himself to it. He didn’t want me to take him up on his offer. And in all likelihood it would be unsuccessful anyway: I was unacceptable. His father may have wanted an heir, but his mother would insist on a
n heir who had been conceived in wedlock, a boy born free of scandal. Jonathan’s parents would insist he go ahead with the marriage to Evangeline McDougal, and once word of my pregnancy got out, I would be ruined.

  There was another way. Hadn’t I said as much to Sophia, those few months ago?

  I squeezed Jonathan’s hand. “I could go to the midwife.”

  A look of gratitude lit up his face. “If that is what you want.”

  “I will—find a way to visit her as soon as possible.”

  “I can help with the expense,” he said, fumbling at his pocket. He pressed a large coin into my hand. I was sickened, and resisted the urge to slap him, but I knew it was only out of anger. After staring at the coin for a second, I slipped it inside my glove.

  “I am sorry,” he whispered, kissing me on the forehead.

  They were calling for Jonathan, his name echoing from the cavernous congregation hall. He left to answer the summons before we were discovered together, and I crept back up the stairs to the loft so I could see what was going on.

  Jonathan’s family stood in the aisle outside their box, the one closest to the pulpit as the place of honor. Charles St. Andrew was at the top of the aisle, arms raised as he made an announcement, but he looked more piqued than usual. He had been this way since the autumn, said it was exhaustion or too much wine (if anything, it would be a combination of too much wine and too much dallying with the servant girls). But it had been as though one day he suddenly turned older, grayer, and sagging of flesh. He tired easily, falling asleep in congregation as soon as Pastor Gilbert opened the Bible. He soon couldn’t be bothered to attend the town council meetings and sent Jonathan in his place. None of us guessed at the time that he could be dying. He had forged the town with his own hands; he was indestructible, the courageous frontiersman, the prescient businessman. Looking back, that was probably why he’d pressed Jonathan to marry and start producing heirs: Charles St. Andrew sensed his time was running out.

  The McDougals rushed down the aisle to join him in the formal announcement, Mr. and Mrs. McDougal like a pair of harried ducks followed by their ducklings, in a row, more or less descending in age. Seven girls, some properly tied and bowed, others windblown and tousled, with a hem or lace peeking from their garments.

  And, at the very end, the baby of the family, Evangeline. A lump formed in my throat at the sight of her, she was that beautiful. No sturdy farm girl, Evangeline was just beginning to cross from child to woman. She was graceful and willowy, with modestly budding breasts and hips, and a cherub’s lips. Her hair was golden still, and fell down her back in long ringlets. It was evident why Jonathan’s mother had picked Evangeline: she was an angel sent to earth, a heavenly figure worthy of her eldest son’s attentions.

  I could have wept, there in the church. Instead, I bit my lip and watched as she brushed by Jonathan, giving him the faintest nod, stealing a glance up at him from under her bonnet. And he, pale-faced, nodded back. The entire congregation followed this minute exchange and understood what had transpired between the two young people in the fluttering of an eye.

  “It’s about time they found a wife for ’im,” someone behind me muttered. “Now mebbe he’ll quit chasin’ after the girls like a dog in heat.”

  “A scandal, I say! The girl is but a child—”

  “Hush now, the difference ’tween their years is but six, and a good many husbands are older than their women by more’n that …”

  “True, in a few years’ time it will make no difference, when the girl is eighteen or twenty. But fourteen! Think of our own daughter, Sara-beth; would you wish to see her married off to the St. Andrew boy?”

  “Good heavens, no!”

  Below, the rest of the McDougal girls formed a loose chain around Jonathan and their parents, while Evangeline stood shyly a pace behind her father. Now is no time to be coy, I thought at the time, straining to hear what was being said below. You are the one he will wed. That handsome man is to be your husband, the one who will take you to his bed every night. He is a hard man to give your heart to, and you must prove yourself up to the challenge. Go stand next to him. Eventually, with much urging from her parents, she stepped out awkwardly from behind her father, like a newborn foal trying out its legs. It wasn’t until they stood side by side that it struck me: she was still a child. He towered over her, so much larger than she was. I pictured them lying together in bed, and he looked as though he could crush her. She was small and trembled like a leaf at his slightest attention.

  He took her hand and stepped closer to her. There was something gallant about the gesture, almost protective. But then Jonathan leaned over and kissed her. It was not his usual kiss, the one I had memorized, the one so powerful that you’d feel it down to your toes. But he’d signaled that he’d accepted the marriage contract by kissing her in full sight of their families and the congregation. And in front of me.

  I understood Sophia’s message to me, then, from the dream. She wasn’t exhorting me to kill myself in recompense for what I had done to her. She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love Jonathan as I did, as she had. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart’s desire? Can you stop loving someone? Easier to drown yourself, Sophia seemed to be telling me; easier to take the lover’s leap.

  All this reverberated in my mind as I watched from the balcony, tears forming, my fingers digging into the soft pine railing. I was high above the congregation floor, high enough to take the lover’s leap. But I didn’t; even then I was mindful of the baby inside. Instead, I turned and ran down the steps and away from the wrenching scene before me.

  TWELVE

  I rode home from church in silence in the wagon with my father. He kept an eye on me, wrapped in my cloak and scarf but shivering and with teeth chattering, even though the winter sun had come out and painted us both in sunlight. He said nothing, undoubtedly attributing my ill appearance and reticence to the news of Jonathan’s betrothal. We stopped at the tumbledown Catholic church and found my mother, sisters, and Nevin waiting in the snow, blue-lipped and chiding us for being late as they climbed into the wagon.

  “Hush now, we have good reason for the delay,” my father said to them in a tone that meant he would brook no nonsense. “Jonathan’s betrothal was announced after the service today.” Considerately, there was no merrymaking among the rest of them, only glances from my sisters and a sneer of “Pity the girl, whoever she be!” from my brother.

  When we arrived at our farm, Nevin unharnessed the horse while Father went to check on the cattle, and my sisters took advantage of the sunny day to see to the chickens. I followed my mother desultorily into the house. She bustled around the kitchen, getting ready to work on the evening meal, while I sat on a chair in front of a window, still in my cloak.

  My mother was no fool. “Would you like a cup of tea, Lanore?” she called from the hearth.

  “I do not care,” I said, careful to keep a warble of sadness out of my voice. My back to her, I listened to the clatter of a heavy pot hung on the hook over the fire and the splash of water poured from the bucket of drawn water.

  “I see you are upset, Lanore. But you knew this day would come,” she said at length, firmly but kindly. “You knew one day Master Jonathan would marry, as will you. We told you having such a strong friendship with a boy was inadvisable. Now you see what we meant.”

  I let a tear dribble down my face since she couldn’t see me. I felt weak, as though I’d been trampled on and battered by one of the bulls in the field. I needed to turn to someone; I knew at that moment, sitting there, that I would die if I had to keep this secret to myself any longer. The question was, who could I trust in my family?

  My mother had always been kind to us children, defending us when my father’s upright sensibility got the better of him and his scolding grew too harsh. She was a woman and had been pregnant six times, with two babes
buried in the churchyard; surely she would understand how I felt and would protect me.

  “Mother, I have something I must tell you, but I am terrified of how you might react, you and Father. Please promise me that you will still love me after I have said what I must,” I said, my voice quaking.

  I heard a muffled cry escape my mother, followed by the sound of a mixing spoon clattering to the floor, and I knew I had to say no more. For all her advice to me, for all her pleading and nagging, her worst fear had come true.

  Nevin was made to hitch the horse up to the wagon again and go with my sisters to the Dales’ house on the other side of the valley, and stay there until our father fetched them. I was left alone with my parents in the darkening house, sitting on a stool in the middle of the room as my mother cried softly to herself by the fire and my father paced around me.

  I’d never seen my father so enraged. His face was red and bloated, his hands white from clenching them into fists. The only thing that kept him from striking me, I believe, were the tears flowing down my face.

  “How could you do it?” my father railed at me. “How could you give yourself to the St. Andrew boy? Are you no better than a common harlot? Whatever possessed you?”

  “He loves me, Father—”

  My words were too much provocation for my father; he lashed out and struck me hard across my cheek. Even my mother sucked in her breath in surprise. The pain radiated sharply from my jaw, but it was the rawness of his anger that stunned me.

  “Is that what he told you? Are you stupid enough to believe him, Lanore?”

  “You’re wrong. He really does love me—”

  He drew his hand back to hit me a second time but stopped himself. “Do you not think he’s said as much to every girl who’d listen to him, to get them to give in to his desire? If his feelings for you are true, why is he betrothed to the McDougal girl?”

  “I don’t know,” I gasped, wiping tears from my cheeks.