“So, I won’t see you at the college?” her father asked.
She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay close to home after that.”
Her father’s shoulders relaxed, as if…relieved? She hadn’t noticed that before. Perhaps her presence at the college did cause him some anxiety. He’d never tell her or admit it, she was sure of it, but maybe she was being overly determined to do something that might not be in the best interest of those she cared about most.
It was a conundrum.
And her head hurt more just considering it.
Why did change have to occur? Better yet, whywas it human nature to resist it so? She lifted a piece of toast from a plate and began to slather it with marmalade. “I need to harvest some more honey. I had several frames that appeared nearly ready last week, so they should be abundant today.”
“It sounds like you have your day’s work planned,” her father commented as he pushed away from the table and stood. “I’ll be on my way. I’ll see you this evening.” He walked over and kissed her head tenderly.
Elizabeth patted his hand and wished him a good day. After she broke her fast, she donned an old dress that she often used for beekeeping and that already had a few beeswax stains on the skirts. After buttoning up her sturdiest boots, she stepped out back and collected her smoker and a basket that would carry the frames of capped honey back to the house for harvesting.
In short order, she was riding out toward the hives, passing through the streets of Cambridge until she reached the outskirts of town where they blended into the farm country and small woods. Winifred, her mare, plodded along without a second thought to the slight bustle around her, but Elizabeth scanned the street, searching for the rogue with a black eye.
She had purposely resisted the temptation to think too much about last night’s events. Not because they had frightened her, but because theywere very confusing and she wasn’t sure how to sort through them. Descartes’s methodology be hanged. She didn’t want to break down the problem into simple parts, because every part she dared to consider was not at all simple.
She had started the night with the intention of deciphering Mr. Finch’s attentions and her own reaction. She had partly accomplished that goal; he was certainly interested in her. The problem was understanding her own heart. It was true that he was kind, brave, and generous, but when she met his gaze, her heart didn’t pound and her belly didn’t grow warm.
And as fate would have it, immediately after her confusion with Mr. Finch, she had found herself with Lord…with Collin. And it was different and wrong.
Wrong in every way. Nonetheless, her heart couldn’t beat a steady rhythm in his presence, and when he looked at her, all her many thoughts evaporated. At one point, she’d thought she’d stop breathing, for heaven’s sake!
She would be lying to herself if she denied the attraction, the strong desire to be around him again though she was likely to lose her temper, but the emotions were also deep, and that was the rub.
With Mr. Finch, it was about what she wanted to feel or should feel.
With Collin, it was what she was powerless to stop feeling.
Which should be her answer. The problem was, she didn’t like the answer. And she wasn’t sure Collin held any interest or, more importantly, any lasting interest in her. All this musing was likely for naught, she chastised herself as she guided her mare onto a deep path from the road.
Enough, she scolded herself. There would be plenty of time to digest her emotions and reactions later, to lay them out in little logical lines, but thinking about them now was making her head pound.
She ducked under a low branch and listened to the soft hum of the bees working around her on the last flowers of autumn. Soon they would be finishing all their honey-making and preparing for winter.
When she drew closer, she dismounted from her mare and tied her to a low branch far out of view of the hive. She’d never known her bees to be aggressive, but she wasn’t going to risk harming her horse, who was tethered. She took down the bucket and tools she’d strapped to the saddle and removed the items she needed first. She slid on thicker gloves and put a veil over her small hat to cover her face and neck. Withdrawing her smoker, she collected some dry debris from the woods and placed these in the small can, lighting it and watching as the smoke curled up.
With the smoker in one hand and a bucket and small metal bar in the other, she walked to the hive,approaching from the back. It was a round hive, with a single entrance and a removable lid. She set down her smoker and lifted the lid of the hive, the humming sound of tens of thousands of bees filling her ears. The hive was warm to the touch, another miracle of nature, and she waited a moment to let the bees settle. She slowly reached down to her smoker and puffed it a few times to calm the bees hovering around the top of the hive. They distanced themselves from the smoke, and she got to work.
She searched through each piece of honeycomb, noting the patterns of the brood, and selecting a few frames that were fully capped with golden honey. She took the metal tool and slowly scraped along the side of the attached honeycomb to loosen it. Honey broke out of a few of the capped cells, and the bees immediately flocked to it, their little tongues devouring the dehydrated nectar. They’d store it in their honey stomach and deposit it back in the hive later, wasting nothing. She continued working and withdrew a full comb of capped honey, gilded in the sunlight and sticky. She could only remove two frames of the honey. The rest would need to be saved for the bees so they would have adequate food to survive the winter. They shared, and it was important she always leave them enough for their own use.
Setting the honeycomb inside the bucket she’d brought along, she went to work on the next oneto harvest. In short order, she’d removed the honeycomb and placed it beside the first. The removal of the comb granted her a deeper view into the hive and a better view of the remaining comb, where some cells were filled with honey, some with larvae waiting to hatch, and some appearing empty but likely filled with eggs from the queen.
The queen was vital to the hive’s survival. Without her, there would be no continual source of bees to work in the hive and collect the nectar and pollen. The queen’s one job was to lay eggs, and she took it seriously.
Elizabeth twisted her lips. If only all of humanity had such determination, she mused. She carefully placed the lid back on the hive and dusted the lingering bees from the honeycomb before she took it back to where her horse waited. Winifred usually ignored any bees that tried to ride on Elizabeth’s skirts or the bucket, but Elizabeth was cautious. One sting could spook a horse easily enough, even one with as gentle a temper as Winifred, and that could end badly for both of them.
She attached the bucket to the saddle and then unwound the reins from the branch. Leading her horse through the woods and back to the path was the best choice for both of them. A few bees followed the scent of their honey, and a few rode on Winifred’s rump, but thankfully none felt threatened enough to sting. As the road came back intoview, Elizabeth dusted off the last bee and checked her mare for stragglers before mounting up.
She realized, belatedly, she should have taken Winifred for a ride before visiting the bees, since she couldn’t do that now. That was unfortunate, but at least she had her honey. The road wound around slowly, and Elizabeth relaxed as the rhythmic pace of her horse lulled her into a peaceful state. The sunshine was warm on her skin, and with only a few puffy clouds littering the sky, the area might make it a whole morning without rain. That was another good reason to collect the honey today, since bees didn’t appreciate foul weather.
As Winifred sauntered into town, Elizabeth’s attention snapped back into focus, and she scanned the faces of any men in the street. It wasn’t as if she had a plan of action if she did see the criminal, but at least she could tell Collin when and where she’d seen him and possibly use that to pinpoint where he called home.
She navigated the streets without any sight of the man and eventually slowed her mare as she reached home. After caring for Winifred, she took the bucket into the kitchens in the lower part of the house and began working, much to the chagrin of her cook and scullery maid. She ignored them and proceeded to take care of the honey. It was a slow process, extracting. First she took a clean bucket and set it on the countertop. Next, she held thehoneycomb above the bucket, then took a long knife and began scraping off the wax caps of each honey cell, careful not to cut deeply but just scrape the top off the cells. The golden honey began to ooze out slowly, catching the light as it flowed into the bucket.
When she’d finished opening all the cells, she turned the honeycomb to the other side and performed the same process. She scraped the wax from the knife onto a nearby dish for later use and watched as the honey slowly collected in the bottom of the bucket. Eventually, she’d need to hold the comb on a string over the bucket, allowing the final drops to make their way into the bottom. When the comb was empty of the honey, she would save half for the wax and then return the other half to the hive for them to reuse. They’d likely disassemble it and rebuild new comb with it, but she’d deposit it back into the hive to discourage bees from other hives from trying to take it.
