The Soldier's Poisoned Heart

Jacob hired a man to come in from town every day—he wouldn’t be staying on permanently, Jacob reckoned, so there was little enough reason to find him space to sleep in the house—and the pair of them made short work of what remained of the root clearing job.

They laid down the stones again and grouted them in the space of an afternoon, and it was as if the things had never been taken up, aside from the differently-colored grout. The discoloration would come with time, John Paul was assured

.

The last of the gazebo went to kindling, and was thrown onto the growing pile of wood beside the house. Quickly, he found, the work was getting done. After a week, the lumber yard sent some boys over with three wagons’ load of hardwood floor panels, and they set to work unloading them. It took the better part of the day just getting materials situated, and then they started ripping the floors out.

John Paul stood on the third floor and watched them pulling the flooring out. He had grabbed the dolls he’d been keeping and was holding the lot of them in one over-full arm as he watched. They pulled the entire floor up, revealing a much worse-looking wooden floor beneath it.

They made disapproving noises as they inspected this under-floor before pulling it up as well. They didn’t explain, but he gathered that they had their work cut out for them. He turned around and walked back down the stairs. The dolls needed a place to go, he thought. So they’d go in his room.

He thought he might have a good home for them. It would only be another few days until he would go to the store, the first of June. Once he saw Lydia again, he’d give her the dolls. No more waiting for the right time.

That was the best way, he thought. He had no need for them. When he’d seen them, he’d immediately thought they would be for her. He’d been waiting for a chance to give them, some sort of occasion, but there wasn’t any occasion.

The death of James Wakefield, only a decade older than John Paul himself, had cemented a fear in John Paul’s heart. There was only so much time left in his life; he hoped for more than a scant few years until his heart gave out or sickness took him, but his escape from the violence of military life hadn’t made him immune..

He wouldn’t waste what time he had left, not any more. He laid down in the bed he’d been using. Eventually, everything in the room would need to come out. The floors here were no better than those above, and they’d have to play musical chairs for a bit until the flooring job was done. Until then, he tried not to think of the room as “his” room. It was just a room he was using right now.

Eventually he hoped to move the bed up to one of the master bedrooms on the third floor. It would be a fair bit of work, hoisting up the bed to that height, but with four strapping young men, and John Paul himself, a bear of a man, to do the moving, it would be easier work than it could have been. He laid his head back and drifted off to sleep.

He dreamed of Lydia, as he had the past several nights. In his dreams, they sat together; sometimes, they spoke, other times, he would just watch her with needlework. Tonight they walked through the snow, talking about everything he could imagine.

Henry and Simon walked with them, fast friends themselves. The four of them chatting happily, as snow fell lazily down on them. He woke up to a knock on the door.

The voice on the other side said “You’ve got mail, sir.”

John Paul rubbed the tiredness from his eyes as an envelope was slipped under the door. On the front, it had his address, written in a fine hand that he didn’t immediately recognize. After a moment’s inspection, he realized it was Lydia’s writing. He’d only ever seen her write in pencil or chalk at the store; to see her writing with a pen was an entirely new and exhilarating experience, all loops and shading.

He cut the envelope open and pulled the contents out. There was a card and a letter. He took the card first and read it. It was written with the same fine, feminine hand that had written his name and address on the front. It read that she was happy to hear of my condolences, and thanked me. She finished it “Ever Yours, Lydia Wakefield.”

The other piece of paper sat beside it, folded over to fit, and John Paul opened it.

This was written in a rather different hand. It was not nearly so fine, though it had a practicality to it that John Paul found himself liking even still.

“Mister Foster,” it opened.

“We have all had a good deal of tragedy in our lives recently, after the death of our father. Lydia grieves for him, and as a daughter should, she will be mourning for the space of a year.

“The day of our father’s death, she expressed to me, as well as to our late father, her desire to marry you, and this is not a matter I have forgotten, nor, I suspect, has her grief dulled such a desire.

“Of course, it would not be proper to have any sort of marriage during her period of mourning, but I would like to see that you have some sort of closure. I suspect that the preparations for such a union would help to lift the spirits of all the members of the Wakefield home, and as the new head of the Wakefield family, I am in a position to grant such a request, and I am inclined to do so.

“If you could come to the Wakefield home at your earliest opportunity, we will be having a small dinner among the family and close friends to try to put this awful event behind us the night before we intend to re-open the store, May 30th. If you would like to come at 4:30, then we can discuss matters of matrimony before the other guests begin to arrive.

“Signed,

“Simon Wakefield.”

John Paul folded the paper over. That would be tomorrow, then. He felt the straight line of his shoulders sag just a little bit. What he had not predicted, after the first few days of misery, was how much he had held himself up through sheer obstinacy over the past two weeks.

Now that he had an answer, the fight was gone, as if the chair had been pulled out from under him. He was surprised to find his eyes wet. He had his answer, then. After so much time fretting over it, the relief overwhelmed him. He walked back over to the bed and laid down.

He looked at the ceiling for a moment, and then covered his eyes with his arm and tried not to think for a while. He hadn’t forgotten Simon’s request for a loan. He wondered if that played a role in the agreement to marriage. It was much harder, after all, to refuse a future brother-in-law than it was to refuse the brother of a woman who you had once known, but been refused the hand of once and for-all.

He pushed the thought away before it could eat him up. He’d been given no reason, none whatsoever, to doubt Simon’s sincerity. To think such thoughts about him, particularly after being offered such a boon very nearly unbidden—it was downright un-Christian. He wiped the wetness from his eyes and sat back up.

He had only just arisen, but the revelations of the day exhausted him even still. He pulled on his clothes, then pushed out the door. He may not have any major work to do himself, but he was the master of his home, in the same way that Simon Wakefield was now the master of his own. He needed to check on the men who were working, to ensure that he was still perfectly happy with the work they were doing. To do otherwise would be shirking his duties.