3

Manda Whitt was climbing steadily up the side of Spare Mountain. It was a harder task in her new shoes than she had thought it would be, and now a blister threatened on her right heel. She supposed a trek in her clogging shoes had not been a good idea. But she wanted to break them in before the dance on Saturday night.

She could have picked an easier hike, but she had a special place where she liked to sit and dream, and it was such a pretty day. Her dress for the dance was already pressed and hanging in the chiffonier at home. She could just imagine its skirt flaring out as she twirled around the dance floor. This was no place to practice twirling, however. The narrow trail she climbed was bordered by rugged trees and thick brush on one side and a hundred-foot drop down a sheer sandstone wall on the other. Fall over that and you wouldn’t even get a chance to bounce.

Just around the bend was the familiar jutting cliff where she loved to sit and read from the Woman’s Home Companion magazine Miz Copper received in the post each month. Of course, Miz Copper wouldn’t mind if she read at the kitchen table or on the porch, but there were so many distractions in the Pelfrey house.

And then there was Miss Remy always studying her. If Miss Remy caught her with a book in hand, she was sure to find more wash to do or a floor to sweep. Manda’s fingertips were still sore from one of Miss Remy’s found jobs that had Manda stuffing all the pillow ticks with fresh feathers. Pushing a needle through that thick ticking was hard even with a thimble, and each seam had to be sewn twice over. Miss Remy put that old saw “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” to test. Manda tried to stay out of her way as much as possible.

Miz Copper took pity sometimes, though. She would breeze by and see Manda bent over some job. “Go do something fun for a while,” she’d say. Or she might take time to help Manda peel potatoes or wash a window. It gave them a chance to talk. Manda loved that.

Manda rounded a curve in the cow path and dusted leaves and twigs from the wide ledge that provided a fine seat on the safe side of the cliff. From where she sat, she could look across the narrow trail to the top of Devil’s Eyebrow, so named for what it put you in mind of if you stood at the foot of Spare Mountain and looked upward. The overhang was bare save for a few scraggly cedars seeking nourishment in the scant film of soil atop the solid rock. A breeze always wafted across the stone plate as if a giant hand brandished a pasteboard fan across its surface.

Manda untied her bonnet strings and set the bonnet on the ledge beside her. With a contented sigh she twisted the top off a jug she’d stopped at Sweetwater Creek to fill on her way up the mountain. She was thirsty as a lizard in a dry creek bed, and the cold, pure water sure hit the spot.

With her thirst slaked, she took a magazine from the linen bag she carried over her shoulder and quickly found her place. Oh, what had happened to the willful Rose Feathergay since last month’s serial chapter ended? Rose had fled her home after a dreadful argument with her mother over Rose’s broken engagement to Laurence Shallow, the town’s most eligible bachelor.

Cracking the spine of the magazine, Manda read breathlessly as Rose, heiress to the Feathergay estate, granddaughter of a governor, wheeled a bicycle through the bustling streets of Boston.

A bicycle! Manda couldn’t get her mind around that. She couldn’t figure how Rose kept it going fast as the wind. And what did she do with her skirts? What kept them from catching in the spokes and tipping the beautiful, misunderstood Rose headfirst over the handlebars? Perhaps she wore a split skirt like Miz Copper did when she rode Chessie. Manda thumbed back through the magazine to the pattern section, but she didn’t find any pictures of riding habits. Still puzzled, she returned to the story, underlining each typed word with one finger.

In a flush of anger, the headstrong Rose cycled through the city and was soon out of town, bumping along on an unfamiliar road. She would not be forced into marriage just to please her parents, Rose vowed, while dashing hot tears from her porcelain cheeks. She would not. As if in punctuation to her mood, the skies darkened threateningly and the road turned desolate.

Manda shivered. She hoped it didn’t rain and ruin Rose’s straw hat. Rose had grabbed the newly fashionable boater when she fled out the door of her father’s three-story mansion.

The wind picked up, whipping like a gale. She should turn back. It was not too late to make amends, though her mother would have to accept that Rose was an enlightened woman. She would live her own life and not bow to the dictates of old-fashioned society. Rose turned her conveyance and pedaled hard against the wind. Rain stung her eyes as a sudden gust jerked her hat and sailed it into the trees that lined the uneven roadway. She could barely see, and pedaling became more and more difficult. Suddenly the bike careened into a bank. Rose could hear the hiss of the punctured tire even over the howling wind. She was stranded miles and miles from civilization.

Manda glanced about. She could hardly believe it was still sunny here on the side of the mountain, for she could fairly feel the raindrops that wet Rose’s heart-shaped face. Whatever would happen next?

The daring Rose had thought to carry a patching kit and a tire pump in her handlebar basket, and now she proceeded to change her own tire.

As luck would have it, a handsome young man appeared from the forest with the straw boater clutched in his workingman’s hands. “Can I help you with that, miss?”

Rose looked him over from his wide shoulders and narrow waist to his tightly laced logging boots. She liked what she saw. As her eyes met his, sparks flew. Easily, Rose handed over the patching kit. What began as a punctured tire on a rough road paved the way for a new adventure as the thoroughly modern Rose Feathergay met the old impasse of love.

Manda closed the magazine. Her shoulders slumped. Why couldn’t she find romance like the fetching Rose Feathergay? Gurney Jasper was her sort-of boyfriend, she supposed. He was meeting her at the dance, after all, and everybody teased her about him. But he wasn’t one bit stirring. Gurney didn’t move quick enough to strike sparks.

Manda ran through the couples she knew. Her brother Dimmert and his wife, Cara, were happy together, but they were dull as dishwater. Now her sister Dance and her husband, Ace, had sparks. Oh my, did they—always exchanging heated barbs, acting like they could set each other afire but not in a good way. That left Miz Copper and Mr. John. They were so sweet together Manda could see sparks sometimes, but actually they weren’t very exciting.

Manda put the periodical in her linen poke and rose from her seat. Stepping across the path, she walked to the rim of Devil’s Eyebrow. In the valley far below, she spied a wisp of smoke rising lazily from the chimney of Dimmert’s toy-size cabin. Yonder was the house that belonged to Dance. Funny, as Manda looked down on land that held her bountiful family, she felt as alone as a church house on Monday morning. Here she was eighteen years old and not even promised, much less married.

It was more than a year now since she had left her father and stepmother’s place in Virginia to come to Kentucky to live with her brother. She was sure her pa didn’t miss her one bit. He probably hadn’t noticed she was gone. And Manda sure didn’t miss her stepmother. When Pa married Nora, Manda had been excited and pleased. Her own ma had been dead for a long time, and Manda longed for a mother’s touch. Why, she’d even changed her name to please Pa’s new wife. All the Whitt kids had names that started with D except Ezra. Hers was Dory. Nora made fun of it. She called her Porky Dory. So Manda used her middle name. It hadn’t made a difference. Nora had children of her own and was not given to motherly ways. Manda was little more than a Cinderella before the ball in her stepmother’s house.

It wasn’t that she minded working for Miz Copper—most of the time, anyway. Manda liked to stay busy, and she liked earning her own keep. But she wanted a house of her own, a real home full of sunshine and laughter like what she remembered of her grandmother’s house. Miz Copper’s was like that too. And busy—my goodness, the work never stopped. Manda lived at the Pelfreys’ during the week, helping with the cooking and cleaning, and went to her brother’s house for the weekends.

Manda felt a flicker of guilt. She probably should have told Miz Copper she was going up mountain. And she probably shouldn’t have told Lilly instead. Sometimes Manda just needed some space.

Just beyond easy reach was a tiny white blossom springing up in a fissure. Manda thought the fragile bloom very brave to pick such a barren place to live. Maybe she could pluck it for her album. She steadied herself with a handful of cedar and leaned out as far as she dared, then bent to pick the flower. It took her a moment to realize the branch that steadied her was slowly tearing away from the trunk of the tree. The soles of her slippers slid like sled runners as she tried to scramble backward across the overhang. Her body careened toward thin air and certain death until an unseen hand grabbed her arm and knocked her off her feet. The sharp, clean scent of crushed cedar brought her to her senses. She was down, but she was alive.

“What are you doing up here, girl?” Gurney Jasper asked as he hunkered down at her side.

“I was just taking a walk,” she said, “taking in the air.”

“You come in a hair of taking a little too much air.” He helped her disentangle from the cedar. “They don’t call this place Devil’s Eyebrow for nothing.”

She’d never felt so foolish. “I need to sit down,” she said, her voice all aquiver, her arms and legs shaking like the palsy.

Gurney took her arm and guided her to the relative safety of the narrow trail. After taking off his light jacket, he spread it on the ledge rock and indicated for her to sit. “Do you want a swallow?” he asked, twisting the top from a canteen.

Water spilled out her mouth and trickled down her chin as she took a long draught. “Thank you. I’d be singing with the angels if you hadn’t come along.”

Gurney shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away.

“Say,” she said, “what are you doing up here?”

He hung his head as a flush crept up his neck.

“Gurney Jasper, were you following me?”

“Well . . . not exactly.”

“You were spying on me,” she said, feeling the heat rise in her face to match his. “Oh, that makes me mad enough to spit.”

Gurney took a lethal-looking slingshot from his back pocket, seated a small stone in the pouch, and pulled it back. “See that blacksnake sunning himself in the crook of yon sycamore?”

She peered at the tree. Sure enough, a blacksnake was coiled tight as a spring in the fork of a big limb. “So?”

Zing, she heard as Gurney released the pouch, then whop-whop-whop as the snake struck one limb after another in his rapid plunge to the ground.

“I come up to practice with my sling—then I saw you, I’ll admit. I was curious is all.”

“Looks like you could have chosen another place to practice,” she replied, picking sticky cedar from the cuffs of her sleeves.

“Since when do you own this mountain, Miss High-and-Mighty?” Gurney snatched up another stone and let it fly over the cliff.

“I’m sorry. Here you’ve saved my life, and I’ve trounced on your feelings.”

“Sticks and stones.” He started to walk away. “Your words don’t hurt me none.”

Manda worked off her shoes. “Wait up,” she called. The packed dirt of the trail felt smooth and cool on the bottoms of her feet. “I’ll walk with you.”

Quick-stepping to keep pace, she followed his broad shoulders down the steep and winding path. “I’m fixing dried apple pies for the dance,” she appeased, sorry for her hurtful words.

He stopped and she nearly smacked into him. “Really?” he said. “That’s my favorite.”

The way to a man’s heart, Manda thought. She wondered if Rose Feathergay knew how to cook.