A Wild Yearning, page 27
"I got a stye," Tildy announced.
Ty squeezed Tildy's shoulder. "That's what it is, honey."
Delia stepped up to them. "Can you cure it?"
He cocked his head and blessed her with that endearing, slanted smile that could so easily twist her heart into knots. "It's as good as done."
Delia followed as he took Tildy inside. She looked around with avid curiosity. The cabin was made of squared logs so tightly fitted that a knife blade couldn't pass between them. It was cool inside today, out of the bright sun, but in winter it would be snug and warm. Delia drew in a deep breath—the air was redolent with the strong, clean smells of pine pitch and the sweet oil he used on his rifle.
The cabin consisted of a single, large room, but a half loft opened onto it from above, and Delia could make out the corner of a low bed covered with bearskins. In spite of the fact that the cabin was in the middle of a wilderness forest, it was luxuriously, almost extravagantly furnished: with an elaborately carved settle, a pair of silk damask chairs, even a sideboard with pewter and glassware. Delia smiled to herself, remembering how he had warned her that first morning that he was a man of refined tastes.
Ty had almost let the fire go out, but he stoked it, tossing on an armload of wood. He hung a tea kettle on the trummel hook, all the while speaking soothingly to Tildy, explaining how she was going to have to put her face over a bowl of boiling water and blink hard so that the stye would burst, weeping itself away.
"And then can I have a cookie?" Tildy asked brightly.
Ty's deep laughter filled the cabin, bringing a smile to Delia's face.
"Can I open the toy chest now, Dr. Ty?" Tildy asked in her piping voice.
"Of course."
Tildy headed unerringly for a copper-banded sea trunk that sat in one corner. It resembled a pirate's treasure chest and was, Delia discovered to her delight, a child's treasure chest, for it was filled with toys—dolls, boats, balls, marbles, and a tiny replica of a wooden wagon pulled by two miniature carved oxen. Tildy lovingly took out the wagon and began to load it with wood chips from the kindling box.
Delia stared at the man as he watched the little girl at play, a warm smile on his face. Only a man who loved children would have a box full of toys all prepared for when they came to visit. She wondered why he hadn't married yet so that he could have children of his own.
Delia strolled around the wonderful cabin. It held such an odd mixture of the genteel and the wilderness life. In the middle of the board table sat a delicate crystal saltcellar and a silver sugar box with matching silver sugar scissors. Yet from the ceiling near the hearth there hung a splint tray of drying apples. A tall, wrought-iron candelabra was displayed atop a corner cupboard. Yet dangling from a peg by the door was a crude lantern made of cow horn. His clay pipe, squirrel-skin tobacco pouch, and hunting knife lay together on the sideboard, next to a fashionable set of pewter tankards.
Part of the room had been turned over to his profession, displaying his apothecary jars, the mortar and pestle, strange and gruesome-looking instruments, and the set of lancet blades. Some of the medicines in his dispensary she recognized —sulfur for preventing the ague, powdered cloves for toothache, peppermint for indigestion. Others she recognized but had no idea what diseases they cured—sweet basil, chinchona bark, wormwood oil. And still others were strange and unfamiliar.
A pair of shelves on the wall were filled with books and folios having to do with chirugery and medicine. Delia read some of the titles: The Method of Physic and The Direction for Health, Both Natural and Artificial. One book bound in colorful red calfskin caught her eye and she took it down to study it further, confident in her newfound ability to read, only to discover that the letters looked scrambled, the words making no sense to her at all.
"It's in Latin," Ty said, startling her so that she whirled around. "In case you were wondering."
Delia's shoulders jerked defensively. "Mrs. Bishop's been teachin'—teaching me my letters."
"So I've been told. Such a skill should come in handy when you're out working in the fields."
She turned away from him, angrily thrusting the book back onto the shelf.
When she turned back around she was faced with his broad chest. He took a deep breath and his muscles rippled. He smelled of male sweat, but it wasn't unpleasant. Still, Delia couldn't resist saying, "You could use a bath." She was pleased to see by the band of color staining his sharp cheekbones that her jibe had hit home.
Then his nostrils flared, his lips tightened. He took a step closer, backing her against the wall. His hip pressed against hers and he trapped her with his hands by clasping the shelf on either side of her head. He brought his face within inches of hers. She could see the individual rough hairs of his whisker stubble, the smile lines at the corners of his mouth, the deep, deep blue of his eyes.
"What are you doing here, Delia-girl?" He growled the words, low in his throat. "What have you come for?"
Delia's chest was so tight, she wheezed. "Tildy—"
"Uh-uh." He shook his head slowly, bringing his face even closer, so close that if she so much as breathed her lips would brush his. "I don't think so, Delia. I think that what you came for is—"
The kettle whistled.
"It's boiling, Dr. Ty!" Tildy exclaimed. "The water's boiling!"
For a second longer Ty's mouth hovered close to hers. Then he swore beneath his breath and pushed himself away from her.
Ty had Tildy stand on a stool, leaning over his large pewter shaving bowl. He poured the boiling water into the bowl. The little girl blinked rapidly as the steam enveloped her face and within minutes the stye had burst. He mopped her wet face with a soft cloth, studying her eye. "Does it hurt anymore, Tildy?"
"Nope. Can I have my cookie now?"
He produced two molasses cookies from a basket on the sideboard. Delia wondered jealously what woman in Merrymeeting had been baking Ty cookies in her spare time.
There was no longer any reason to stay. She took Tildy's hand and led her toward the door. It occurred to her that she should pay Ty for his doctoring, but she had no money with her.
"You'll have to let Nat know what he owes you," she said. "I'll do that," he answered curtly.
Outside, it had turned much hotter. The air was humid and still, and they could hear the screech of locusts in the cattails by the river. Delia paused on the porch, wanting to ask Ty something, wondering if she dared.
Tildy, her cheeks bulging with molasses cookies, chased the black cat beneath the steps. Delia's glance flickered briefly toward the river and the strange conical-shaped hut. "What is that?" she said, although it wasn't what she had wanted to ask.
It had been a mistake to look at him. His thumbs were hooked into the waistband of his breeches, his legs were splayed wide. His magnificent naked chest rose and fell with his slow breathing. He exuded pure masculine sexuality and she jerked her eyes quickly away from him.
"It's a wigwam," he finally said. "My own private sweat lodge."
"Oh..." She breathed, swallowed, sighed. She had no idea what either a wigwam or a sweat lodge was. She blurted out the question that was really on her mind. "Did you promise Nat that the woman you brought him would be a virgin?"
The question startled him. But only for a moment. "What's the matter," he sneered, "was he disappointed?"
She sucked in a sharp breath. "How dare you—"
"Or were you the one who was disappointed?" He took a step to plant himself right in front of her. Angry heat seemed to pour off him in waves. "Didn't Nat manage to please you in bed?"
Their eyes clashed and Delia's chin came up. "Are you always such a bastard with every woman you know... or do I bring out the worst in you?"
He gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "Aw hell, Delia. The truth is I'm j—" He cut himself off.
"What? What is the truth?"
"Nothing. Nat asked me if you'd been a whore back in Boston. I set him straight. That was all I told him."
She barely heard his explanation. She was sure he had been about to admit that he was jealous. Jealous of her and Nat? The thought thrilled, confused, and frightened her all at once.
Tildy scooted out from beneath the steps, dragging the cat by its hind legs. The cat came reluctantly, hissing and digging its claws into the soft ground, and leaving tiny, twin furrows in its wake.
"Come on, little puss," Delia said, laughing. Ty didn't move, so she stepped around him. "We've got to be getting home now. Your da needs help with the haying."
At the edge of the clearing they turned and looked back. Tildy flapped her hand in a vigorous wave. "Goodbye, Dr. Ty! Thank you for the cookies!"
Ty lifted his hand in a brief farewell. He looked lonely to Delia, standing by himself on his porch in the hot, glaring sun.
Chapter 17
Delia stared at Meg in disbelief. "Do you mean to tell me I'm to drop a couple of chickens down the chimney?"
Meg nodded, her thin face serious. "Ma always cleaned it that way. When it got to smoking bad. They flap their wings, you see, and that knocks the soot out."
"Chickens down the chimney!" Tildy confirmed. "My eyes hurt!"
The fireplace was definitely smoking. It was now pouring in the keeping room in soft, wispy drifts, causing their eyes to burn and tear. Earlier Nat and the girls had had to finish their breakfast outside and the way Nat had stared at Delia, disapproval all over his face, she knew he blamed her for it. Although why it should be her fault, she couldn't imagine.
Still, he had gone to his work in the fields that morning, leaving her with no doubt that he expected her to rectify the situation and that, after over a month of marriage, she was still a failure as a wife.
Now she eyed Meg suspiciously. "You wouldn't by any chance be trying to play a trick on me?"
Meg's eyes went round with wounded surprise. "Of course not. I'm only telling you what Ma used to do. Just ask Papa."
Delia had no intention of asking Nat. Things were so strained between them, they couldn't speak to each other without it ending in an argument. They had gone from feeling awkward and shy, to active dislike. At night, he still slept on the shakedown in the linter. And he spent an hour every day before sundown up on the hill in back of the barn, speaking to his dead wife's grave.
"All right..." Delia said reluctantly. "Tell me how it's done."
At Meg's direction, Delia doused the fire with buckets of sawdust and water, which naturally caused the smoke to billow out in dark, choking clouds, covering the keeping room and everything in it with a layer of gray soot. Delia wanted to sob with despair—she'd be all day cleaning the mess, and she'd miss her lesson with Anne Bishop.
Next she went out to the yard and lured the chickens over with a handful of corn kernels. She snatched at a hen, grasping it by the wings and gingerly holding it away from her body. "Now what do I do?" she asked a giggling Meg, as the chicken flapped frantically in her arms, squawking madly. Tildy danced around them, squealing with laughter.
"You carry her up onto the roof and drop her down the chimney."
Delia looked up, way up, at the chimney stack poking through the cedar-shingled roof. She swallowed hard; she'd always been a little afraid of heights. But she felt Meg's judging, challenging eyes on her and so she said, "Fetch me a grist sack then. I can't climb a ladder and carry this bloo—blasted chicken both at the same time."
After some difficulty, Delia and Meg got two of the biggest hens into the sack. They brought the ladder from the barn and leaned it against the lower side of the house. After first taking off her slippery leather-soled shoes, Delia climbed with shaky legs, muttering to herself about how she should have had the sense to stay in Boston where, when a chimney smoked, you hired a sweep.
The roof had been built with a sharp pitch because of the heavy winter snows and she had to claw her way up it on her hands and knees, dragging the squirming sack with her. She didn't dare let her eyes drift toward the ground. Once at the top she straddled the peak and looked down the chimney stack, but all she could see was blackness.
She hollered to Meg, who still stood alongside the ladder.
"Meg, go on inside, will you? So's you can catch the hen when she comes down!"
"Catch the hen?" Meg shouted back at her.
"Aye!"
After a moment's hesitation, Meg disappeared inside.
"Delia, don't fall!" Tildy called up to her.
"I won't," Delia said in a reedy voice and offered up a silent prayer, asking God to watch over this poor Boston grog shop girl who had wandered onto a Maine farm by mistake.
Taking a ruffled, clucking hen out of the sack, she peered down the chimney again. "Are you ready?" she called out to Meg, her voice tumbling down, then echoing back at her.
She heard a muffled reply, which she took to be an affirmative. Her thighs gripping the roof, she leaned way over and, fighting a silly impulse to shut her eyes, dropped the chicken down the chimney. There was a frantic squawking and flapping sound and then sudden silence.
"Meg?"
"It's stuck! The hen is stuck!"
Delia pushed wisps of sweaty hair out of her face. Lord above us, Delia, how do ye manage t' get yersel' into these situations?
She inched her way across the roof and back down the ladder. She paused a moment to saver the blessed feel of solid ground beneath her feet before she hurried inside, and she and Meg looked up the chimney. Blackness.
"It's not making a sound," Meg whispered. "Do you think it's dead?"
"If it is we'll have chicken stew for supper."
"But how are we going to cook anything with a chicken stuck up there?"
That was, Delia admitted, a problem. "I know," she said. "I can try to poke her down with something."
She went onto the porch, searching for the most likely looking instrument from among the tools kept hanging on the wall. She decided on her garden hoe.
She thrust the hoe handle up the chimney, but met only empty space. "I can't reach. You'll have to get on my shoulders, Meg, and poke it up there."
Meg's eyes went wide, but she nodded vigorously.
Meg got on Delia's back, holding the hoe. Hunching over, Delia shuffled into the hearth. She straightened slowly. "Give it a good poke, Meg."
Meg gave it a good poke. The chicken screeched, flapped. Soot and feathers rained down.
Suddenly the chicken came hurtling at them, bringing clumps of cinders and soot in its wake. Shrieking, Meg reared back. Delia's legs shot out from under her, and she and Meg went flying backward, tripping over a spider pan that skidded across the floor, knocking over a half-dozen ax helves Nat had been seasoning by the hearth, and sending them rolling and clattering like bowling pins across the room. Delia landed on her back with a bone-rattling jar. Meg landed on Delia's chest, knocking the wind out of her.
For a moment Delia could only lie there, wheezing and wondering if she would suffocate before she began breathing again. At last she was able to draw in a gasping mouthful of precious air. Pushing herself up onto her elbows, she stared at Meg, who stared back at her—two pairs of white eyes in charcoal-black faces. "Are you all right?" Delia croaked.
Meg sat up, rubbing her forehead. "I bumped my head." She giggled. Delia bit her lip.
Soon their loud, breathless whoops filled the house. The chicken, which had miraculously managed to survive the fall, raced around them, trailing a broken wing and clucking indignantly.
Suddenly from the yard came the sound of Tildy screaming.
Thoughts of wolves and Indians and other such horrors sent Delia lurching awkwardly to her feet. Grabbing the hoe as the only handy weapon, she raced outside, with Meg following.
At the sight of them, Tildy began hopping up and down and pointing. "Nanny goat's in the garden! Nanny goat's in the garden!"
"Aooow!" Delia shouted, enraged, raising the hoe above her head and running to the rescue of the precious garden that she had been slaving over these past weeks. "I'll get ye for this, ye bloody she-devil!"
Delia fully intended to brain the hateful beast, but she had to get within striking distance of it first. She chased the goat around the garden, growing angrier by the moment as it trampled what was left of the vegetables with its sharp hooves... and then the sound of a man's laughter penetrated her fuming consciousness.
She stopped abruptly and whipped around. Tyler Savitch stood there laughing. Laughing at her.
She sucked in her breath at the sight of him. He was naked— or as near to naked as he could be without scandalizing the countryside. He wore only a pair of high moccasins with fringed tops tied around his legs just below the knee and an Indian-style breechclout that was so brief it covered only the necessities, leaving the vast expanse of his long muscular thighs completely bare. A butchered haunch of some enormous, black-haired animal was slung over his shoulders and rivulets of blood trickled down his brown, naked chest.
She stared openmouthed at him, at the magnificent, naked savage sight of him, and her throat went dry, her breasts drew up tight. Then she realized what she was doing and came to herself with an expulsion of pent-up breath and a sharp jerk.
She advanced on him, brandishing the hoe. "What the bloody hell are ye laughing at, ye jackass!"
Ty laughed some more. "I swear, Delia-girl, you have been as hot-tempered lately as a kettle of fat."
How dare he accuse her of being hot-tempered? she fumed, stalking toward him and waving the hoe menacingly in the air. He hadn't been around in weeks, so how could he know the state of her temper?
But when she got within smelling distance of him, she recoiled from the reek of the meat he carried. "Pee-uw!" she exclaimed.
Ty's eyes moved insolently over her, starting with her hair, which had tumbled out of her cap, roaming across the angry features of her soot-stained face, dropping down to linger when they encountered the hoe handle pressed tightly between her full, and quivering breasts—and his lips pursed slightly as if, Lord above us, he was thinking of kissing her there!
