At Dierdre’s glee, Joanna smiled. “She begs a break from her sampler, I’m sure.”
“’Tis better than carding wool.” Dierdre cast a sympathetic look at her sister, the carding brushes in her hands moving swiftly to prepare the wool for spinning into yarn.
Mae reached into her sewing kit where the pincushion rested.
“Pretty!” Dierdre touched it with a careful finger. “Did you make this?”
“Not I. My friend who travels with the army did—Lucy.”
“Lucy is a comely name. I should like to meet her.”
“She learned to sew from her mother like you do yours.”
“Is Lucy a lady like you?”
Mae smiled. “I don’t consider myself a real lady, not like British aristocrats or even the genteel Bostonians and Philadelphians and such. As for Lucy, she and her drummer husband don’t have a home yet and follow the army.”
Joanna clucked from her corner. “Lucy sounds to my liking. Would she come to sup with us on a Sabbath, you think? She and her husband?”
“Do you really need any more to feed, Joanna?” Coralie’s teasing held a bite as she finished setting the table. “I certainly don’t want to wash more dishes.”
“Mercy, living out here so far-flung, I always welcome company so long as they’re honest, God-fearing folk. Our Lord tells us to practice hospitality, does He not?”
“I’d settle for a single letter.” Coralie took a seat by a window, turning her face toward the breeze riffling the curtains.
Waiting for the post, no doubt. They’d been in the Hudson Highlands less than a week. Did Coralie think the post would be swift across enemy lines? Mae felt just as impatient. She’d not rest till this matter with her sister was settled.
“The post will come.” The whir of Joanna’s wheel underscored her certain words. “I recall the Seven Years’ War. Even in the worst of times letters eventually found their way.”
Mae gave silent thanks that Joanna was good-natured. She bore Coralie’s complaints like a long-suffering older sister. As for this letter, when and if it came, would it be as terse as Eben’s last? The unknown made the wait even more nettlesome.
“Soon Jon will return to the fort and leave the rest of us to manage the farm.” Joanna continued her spinning with deft hands. “But before he goes, he’ll have to tell you our valley’s history.”
Curious, Mae slipped outside and rounded the house to admire the early-budding rose she’d found climbing the house’s south wall. Jon wasn’t far, mending fences in the pasture where Orion grazed.
She walked toward him, glad to stretch her legs after so much sewing. “Is now a good time to tell me about the history here?”
“Joanna must have whetted your appetite.” He struck a nail, driving it into the wood. “Her grandfather actually named nearby Buttermilk Falls.”
“A true waterfall?”
“Aye, some seventy-five feet high and foaming like buttermilk.” He gestured toward the foothills where a footpath was visible. “Grandfather Fowler was among the English who came into this valley and routed the Dutch, who’d routed the Lenape through fighting, failed treaties, and disease.”
“A sorry tale much like Chatham’s,” Mae said.
“Chatham—what?” He grunted his discontent. “I cannot make peace with Day’s Bridge being renamed Chatham in ’73.”
“Even if it’s to honor the earl of Chatham who’s been somewhat sympathetic to our American cause?” At the firm shake of his head she said, “I think once the war is won we shall see a great many name changes. Perhaps Chatham will return to being Day’s Bridge once again.”
“If it’s still standing, you mean.”
They exchanged a grim look. “I fear for those who remain,” she said. Hanna and Aaron especially were never far from her thoughts. “I pray the Americans prevail.”
“You’re as staunch in your belief they will win as Coralie is in her belief the war is lost.”
“I hold on to hope. And I pray. ’Tis the least I can do when so many decent men are dying on both sides.”
“Aye, pray. Without ceasing.” He looked up from replacing a rotted post with one newly split.
