Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“Thanks,” Amy said, then pushed Zoë into the bedroom and shut the door. She looked out the window at the end of the hall. By her calculations it was only about two hours before she had to get up and start making bread. Oh, for an electric bread machine, she thought as she went down the stairs. And flush toilets and automatic washers, and great big grocery stores and trucks to carry things home.

Seventeen

When Faith awoke the next morning, she knew exactly where she was and a wave of excitement ran through her. She was not in her apartment in New York. She did not have an appointment with a therapist where she’d yet again have to try to make her believe she wasn’t going to kill herself. And the best, she wouldn’t have to talk to Eddie’s mother about how wonderful a man he’d been, and how he was now with the angels. She wasn’t going to have another long, lonely day with little to do and no one to do it with.

Turning, she saw Zoë asleep beside her and heard the girl’s soft breathing. Without her makeup and her air of being tougher than the rest of the world, Zoë looked like a teenager. Faith really hoped that she would find love with this painter whom she’d talked of the day before. She didn’t care if Zoë had the man for only three weeks; it would be worth it just to see Zoë smile as though she meant it.

Faith gently pushed the covers back, got out of bed, and reached for the gray cotton dress she’d been wearing when she’d tumbled into the barn with Amy and Zoë. It took her twenty minutes to tie the strings on her corset and pull on her petticoat and long underdrawers. She would have liked to take a shower and put on clean clothes, but she couldn’t do that.

Her mind was whirling with all there was to do this day. She planned to spend more time in the kitchen garden, learning what she could from their methods of gardening. What had been lost in our modern world of pesticides and fertilizers that were polluting our waterways?

She also wanted to look in on Beth’s uncle William and see what medicines he was taking. What herbal concoctions were they using that she could take back to the modern world? Yesterday, she and Amy had joked about using orris root on the man’s nurse. She’d realized it even at the moment that they were trying to impress Zoë with their knowledge of herbs. Orris root was poisonous in large quantities, but in small amoun

ts it made a person sick with vomiting and diarrhea.

She looked out the window. The sun was just beginning to rise, and she saw several of the workers walking about, already starting their jobs. For the first time since Eddie died, Faith knew that she wanted to start the day as soon as possible.

Smiling, she left the bedroom, silently closing the door behind her. When she turned, she saw the woman Amy had told her about going into Uncle William’s room. As Amy had said, she was fierce-looking. Tall and thin, her iron-gray hair was pulled back on her head tightly. Her face was long and looked as though she’d never smiled in her life. She reminded Faith of those portraits of American Puritans: stiff and unbending, and judging everyone they met.

The woman looked Faith up and down and obviously found her unsatisfactory. Faith hadn’t yet pulled her hair back so it was hanging loose about her shoulders, and the front of her dress was not fully buttoned.

The woman was holding a tray with a napkin draped over it, food for the sick man.

“May I take that in?” Faith asked politely. “Amy asked me to look in on the patient and—”

She broke off because the woman ignored her. She opened the bedroom door, went into the room, and shut the door behind her in Faith’s face.

For a full minute, Faith stood outside the door with her fists clenched and felt a strong sense of déjà vu. It was exactly what she’d been through so very many times with her mother-in-law. The woman loved to make a contest about who was more needed by Eddie, her or Faith. She’d heard the woman say that only she could do so-and-so, and that Eddie liked her way of doing something better than what Faith did.

Through all those years, Faith had given in to the woman. After all, it was her son and he was dying. How could she fight that?

But now was different. Now she had people on her side. Faith could go to the kitchen, tell Amy what was happening, then she’d go to the earl and Faith would be allowed in the room with the sick man. Or she could go to the kitchen and mix up a batch of orris root and make the woman so sick that she’d have to leave the patient’s side.

Faith didn’t like either of those ideas. She thought of how Amy had come to another time period, all alone, and she’d managed to put herself in a position of command.

“If Amy can do it, so can I,” Faith said as she opened the door and went into the room.

Her first impression was of the musty, airless smell. The windows were shut, and the curtains were drawn so that there was no light in the room. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust before she saw the woman sitting on the far side of the room. She seemed to be knitting.

“Get out,” the woman said in a rough voice. “He is not to have visitors who are not family.”

Involuntarily, Faith took a step backward, then she stopped. Ever since she was a child, she’d been intimidated by women like this one. They had an air of authority about them that had always made Faith want to run and hide. Her mother and Eddie’s had both terrified Faith all her life.

Faith drew herself up, put her shoulders back, and said, “You’re wanted downstairs immediately.” To her astonishment, the voice that had come out of her was her mother’s, and there was some of Eddie’s mother in there too.

When the woman put her knitting down, got up, and walked past Faith as though she weren’t there, she wanted to give a whoop of joy. At the door, she said, “Do not touch him,” in a threatening voice that didn’t scare Faith at all. As soon as she was gone, Faith went to the big windows at the far end of the room and pulled back the heavy curtains. The dust that came off them made her cough.

When they were open and light was coming into the room, Faith turned back to look at the bed. There was so much dust in the air that for a moment she couldn’t see anything or anyone.

She coughed some more, waved her arms about through the dust, and stepped closer to the bed. As her eyes adjusted, she was at last able to see a face barely visible on a pillow. It was long and pale and had scraggly gray whiskers.

If he hadn’t had his eyes open, she would never have believed the man was alive. He blinked at her, but it was like looking at a cadaver come to life.

“Who are you?” the man managed to rasp out, his voice hoarse and weak.

“Faith,” she said, staring at him in disbelief while trying not to show her revulsion. “I’m a nurse, I’m a friend of Amy’s, and I’ve come to look after you.”

“Faith,” he said, and his thin face seemed to give a bit of a smile. “That is a good name for you. You look like an angel. Perhaps you are and you have come to take me from this earthly place.”