Young men are plenty but sweethearts few
If my love leaves me, what shall I do?
—“The Queen of Hearts,” Traditional Folk Song
“Not hungry tonight, Margaret?”
I glared at Henry from across the table. He hadn’t taken his gaze off me all dinner, and I didn’t like the knowing glint in his eye. It had been nearly two weeks since my last meeting with Jack, and I still had not told him of my condition. My stomach had been in turmoil all day, and I was in turns ravenous and then sickened by the mere thought of eating. I had spent most of the meal pushing food around on my plate to make it appear that I had eaten some of the wretched-smelling meat.
My mother frowned at my plate. “Don’t waste your mutton—it’s good meat,” she admonished. It didn’t matter that we could afford it and then some; my mother was ever the frugal New Englander.
Since Jenny Hough’s husband and his friends had come to our house, there had been a shift in the dynamics between my parents and me. My mother’s ever-present mild annoyance with me had curdled into downright dislike, and my father avoided me altogether. I didn’t know if they had told any of my brothers of what had transpired, but I rather thought they hadn’t, for they would not want word to spread even further. Still, I dared not see any more women, for fear of more rumors spreading, more angry mobs at our doorstep.
Dinner dragged on, and I forced myself to nibble at a roll. When my mother’s attention had shifted back to her conversation with Father, I excused myself.
I only barely made it to the basin in my room before I was sick. When I’d rinsed my mouth and put myself to rights, I stepped back into the hall and came face-to-face with Henry.
He must have been waiting for me, listening as I moved about the room, because he pulled me toward him by the arm as soon as I opened the door.
“Take your hand off me,” I snapped.
But his grip on my arm only tightened. He was looking down at me as if he could see all my sins written plainly across my face. Did he know about Mrs. Hough and her accusations after all? Did he know about what I did at night, about the abilities I had kept so carefully hidden all these years?
His words surprised me. “I know about you and your secret lover,” he hissed back. “So you might consider being a little kinder to me, lest I tell Father.”
My blood ran cold. This was somehow worse. “How?” I asked before I could stop myself. But he didn’t need to answer; I already knew. He had followed me after all, seen me with Jack. “What do you want?” I asked with a dry mouth. It wasn’t that I was ashamed or scared to tell my parents about Jack, but I had no assurance from him yet. I wouldn’t go to them until he had proposed, made some promise to me. The humiliation of rejection would be too much to bear. If they even suspected that I was carrying on an affair it would only cement their decision to send me away.
Now that he knew he had my attention, Henry drew back slightly with a smile. “I want my sister back. I want the pretty girl with dark curls to laugh and talk with me again like when we were children. I want you to stop treating me as if I were an afterthought, an annoyance. I’ve only ever wanted what was best for you.” He took my chin in his hand, gently tilting it up so I had no choice but to meet his gaze. “This lover will be the ruin of you.”
I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, a way a brother should never look at his sister. “You’re mad,” I said, pulling away. “Leave me alone.”
He feinted toward me as if he would grab me again, and I automatically shielded my stomach.
I realized my mistake at once as Henry’s eyes grew wide. Silence swelled around us, thick and suffocating. “There’s a child,” he said at last in a whisper. “You’re carrying his child.”
“So what if I am?” I said with a confidence I did not feel.
“Does he know? Does Jack Pryce know that you’re carrying his child?”
I pressed my lips tight, but didn’t say anything. The hallway was dark, the faint sound of Mother and Father finishing their dinner floated upstairs. Outside, the birds sang their last songs of the day.
“Margaret.” Henry’s eyes softened with pity. “My poor darling sister. I thought you too clever for this.”
I had thought myself clever, too, and so above the young women who came to my cabin in the night begging for the evidence of their transgressions to be erased. How foolish I must have looked to Henry. I had thought only of my pleasure, and my ache for a baby to call my own, and not the practical consequences of my actions. How could I have thought that the very same baby that would be my heart’s love would not also be my downfall? There was a reason why after weeks of Jack promising that he would sway his parents that he had hadn’t been round to ask my father’s permission. There was a reason why he had not come for me to elope. All the love potions and spells and prayers couldn’t save me. Oh, how could I have let myself fall in love!
Before I knew what was happening, I found myself folded into Henry’s arms, my tears staining the rough wool of his coat.
“Oh, my dear sister. My own dear love.” His chin tucked over my head, just as Jack had held me. We did not move for a long, long time.
Perhaps if it had been George holding me in his arms in the dark hallway, I would have been able to unburden my hopes and fears to my favorite brother. But it was Henry, not George, so I held the deepest of my thoughts to myself.
He saw me tucked into bed, making certain that I had water and fresh linens. It felt good to be taken care of, to have my burdens eased just the smallest bit, even by Henry. For all that Jack worshipped me, he was not there when I needed him, did not seem to exist outside of our stolen nights in the woods. Henry was here, though, sitting beside my bed, dabbing at my clammy temples with a cloth until the worst of the nausea passed.
“Poor darling,” he crooned.
In the dark, with his hand reassuringly in mine, it was easy to forget the reason for our confrontation in the hall. “Henry,” I whispered, though there was no one that might overhear us, “may I ask you something?”
“Of course, anything.”
Though I didn’t know exactly what it was I was asking, I felt my way as I went. Phebe’s words about my family tickled the back of my mind. “Is there something about our family—something about me—that I don’t know?”
It wasn’t my imagination; Henry went very still, and I could hear his slow swallow. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean exactly, but I think you do.”
Abruptly, he dropped my hand and stood up. “You should sleep,” he told me, brushing a kiss against my brow. “You’re overwrought and need rest.”
Before I had a chance to protest, he had shut the door, leaving me with my festering doubts.