I left early the next morning, albeit very reluctantly. Charlotte had assured me they did not plan to return until midday, but I did not wish to take the chance Mevrouw Jansen might choose to return early. Yet, prudent though I knew it to be, I could not imagine when I might see Ichabod again, to say nothing of when we might next be alone together.
I clung to him just inside the doorway, the front of my gown pressed against his still-bare chest. Inwardly I cursed all that separated us—society, circumstances, fabric.
“It is just over two weeks until All Hallows’ Eve,” Ichabod assured me. “The time will fly by, you will see.”
I eyed him disbelievingly.
“Very well,” he amended. “It shall pass intolerably slowly for me, as well. I was only trying to make you feel better.”
Sighing, I laid my head against his chest. “All will be well,” I murmured.
“All will be well,” he repeated, “and it shall be worth waiting for.”
I leaned up and kissed him, then turned and stepped out the door before I lost the resolve to do so.
I glanced furtively around, but it seemed that no one was about to see me leave. Relaxing slightly, I quickened my pace as I moved toward the road that led to home.
I had just arrived at the Albany Post Road when Brom seemed to materialize from nowhere. “Good morrow, Katrina,” he said, his normally smug face tight with some emotion I could not quite read. “And to what does the village owe your fair presence at such an early hour?”
His words were flirtatious, but his tone was accusatory. I felt like how an American patriot carrying secret messages must have when stopped and interrogated by British soldiers. “Not that it is any of your concern,” I said, hoping my tone sounded sufficiently haughty, “but I spent the night at Charlotte’s, and am on my way home. So if you’ll excuse me.”
I moved to walk around him, but he clamped a large hand on my shoulder. “How dare you!” I exploded, all the rage I had been working so hard to conceal forcing its way out. “Take your filthy hand off me, you devil!”
“What do you take me for, Katrina?” he hissed, bringing his face close to mine. “I know the witch and her witch mother are not home. So what have you really been doing?” Realization dawned on his face, and I saw the emotion tinging his features for what it was: anger. “He is there, isn’t he?” Brom demanded. “That good-for-nothing schoolteacher. Charlotte has been nursing him back to health, and you have spent the night with him!”
I wrenched away from his grasp. “How dare you!” I cried again. “How dare you make such an insinuation about a lady! I have not—”
“He is weak and worthless,” Brom growled. “A nobody. And you would give yourself to him? When I…” He broke off, his rage seeming to choke him.
“He is a hundred times the man you are,” I spat.
Brom flinched as though I had slapped him, and in the hurt look that crossed his face I saw the shadow of the boy he had been. Had I not been so violently enraged, I might have regretted my words.
“Never doubt that, Brom Van Brunt. I do not owe you anything, not my time, nor my body, nor my hand. Mark that well, and do not forget it.” With that, I succeeded in moving past him and continuing on home, at a near run. I did not stop to consider what Brom might have taken as an admission. Or a challenge.
* * *
I spent the darkening October days reading. I finally finished Macbeth, and its ending seemed a bad portent to my mind—the ambition of Macbeth and his lady had come to a bloody end; a warning from Master Shakespeare, it seemed, to those who would reach for what they ought not have. But I was merely reaching for a marriage to the man I loved—a perfectly respectable and reasonable thing for a young woman to want. It was not as though I sought to murder others for power.
Yet as the days grew shorter and grayer and colder, I found that reason did not occupy so lofty a place within my mind as it once had. When it was warm enough, I found myself aimlessly wandering alone through the woods that had once seemed like a haven and now seemed a menacing, unwelcoming bastion of threat. It was as though I was daring some disaster to befall me, daring the Headless Horseman to appear and make good on his threats—or to run into Brom Bones. I did not know which I feared most.
A week later, Ichabod returned for a music lesson. He excused his long absence to my father, repeating the Jansens’ story that he had fallen ill. He no longer needed a sling for his injured arm, though I fancied that I could see the outlines of a bandage beneath his shirt when he removed his coat.
Once we were alone, I fell into his arms, as though it had been months and not mere days since I saw him last. He held me wordlessly before pulling away for the business at hand.
“Shall we have another go at our song?” Ichabod asked, handing the music sheets to me. “Do you remember it well enough?”
I nodded, my eyes never leaving his. “I shall not soon forget that song,” I said. “If ever.”
He nodded once, and without further pleasantries strummed the delicate opening bars of the song. I started singing at my entrance, and soon he joined, and again we sang in harmony, the song about the gentleman and his lady love and all the things that stood between them but could not truly divide them. When we finished, I had tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Katrina,” Ichabod said, catching sight of my face, and rising abruptly from his seat. “Why do you cry?” He gathered me against him, murmuring softly in my ear. “Do not cry. What is it that has made you cry, my love?”
Yet I could not answer him, for I did not truly know. I did not know if it was the exquisite way our voices had blended together, or the hope and sadness of the lovers in the song and my inexplicable fear for them, or that my monthly course should have come four days earlier and had yet to appear.
Perhaps it was all of those things. And so I spoke of none of them.