Chapter Eight
By Thursday morning, Charlotte Bellamy had discovered the Wild Rose Ridge library had three pressing needs.
More shelves.
More rules.
Fewer people trying to help by moving books into the wrong piles.
Mrs. Hanford believed poetry should be shelved where it could be monitored. Mrs. Beck thought poetry should be placed near the front because romance improves the atmosphere. Mrs. Schulte proposed a compromise involving labels, oversight, and a borrowing limit for unmarried men.
Lottie listened to all three opinions with the calm of a woman who had once read aloud through Mrs. Whitmore’s entire argument with her nephew about whether Dickens encouraged idleness. A person who could survive that could survive almost anything.
“Poetry,” Lottie said at last, “will go on the shelf with literature.”
Mrs. Hanford frowned. “That is broad.”
“Yes, books are often broad.”
Mrs. Beck beamed. “I like it.”
“Of course, you do,” Mrs. Hanford muttered.
Cornelia Montgomery covered a smile by examining a stack of primers.
The library looked more like itself today.
The original shelf stood steady against the north wall, and a second shelf was promised by Mr. Stafford before the end of the week, assuming no one broke a chair, door, wagon wheel, or limb in the meantime.
The lending ledger sat on the table by the door, ruled in Delly’s neat hand and guarded by an inkpot, two pencils, and a jar of sand.
The empty space where Tennyson had been still drew Lottie’s eye. Peterson had not returned it.
Good, she thought.
A borrowed book meant he had a reason to come back. She was sorting household guides when a girl of about ten came in with a wilted flower clutched between both hands.
“Miss Bellamy?”
Lottie looked up. “Yes?”
“My ma says you brought a book with plants in it.”
“I did.”
The girl crossed the room and laid the flower on the table with great care. It was pale purple, bruised at the stem, and slightly crushed from being carried too tightly. “Do you know what it is?”
Lottie bent over it. “I don’t, but we shall find out.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Can books do that?”
“Some books can do almost anything if a person asks kindly.”
Cornelia came to stand beside them. “That looks like one of the wildflowers from the meadow above the churchyard. Peterson would know.”
Lottie’s hands paused on the botany volume.
Mrs. Beck leaned closer. “Mr. Peterson knows flowers?”
Cornelia’s expression remained perfectly composed. “He knows the ridge.”
“That is not the same thing,” Mrs. Hanford said.
“No,” Cornelia agreed. “It is useful.”
Useful.
Lottie kept her attention on the flower. The word still bothered her now, though she had used it easily all her life. She had begun to see how often people praised a person for what could be put to work and forgot to ask what else lived beneath it.
“I can look it up,” Lottie said.
The botany volume was beautiful, but it had been written for eastern readers by a gentleman who did not seem to believe Washington Territory existed in any botanical sense. Lottie turned several pages, examined engravings, and found three possibilities, none of them quite right.
The girl leaned closer. “Does the book not know?”
“It appears to be a lily of sorts.” Lottie picked up the flower to compare to the etchings. “There doesn’t appear to be anything close to it in here. Perhaps the book has not been properly introduced to this part of the country.”
A low voice came from the doorway. “It’s camas.”
Lottie looked up too quickly. Peterson stood at the open door with Tennyson tucked beneath his left arm.
He wore his work clothes again, with sawdust clinging to one sleeve and his hat pushed back just far enough so Lottie could see his eyes clearly.
His right hand was tucked near his coat, but not as deep as usual. The morning sun touched one side of his beard and picked out hints of brown and gold she had not noticed before.
He had come back.
With the book.
Not to return it, perhaps, but with it.
The girl turned. “You know flowers, Mr. Peterson?”
“Some.”
He took one step into the room. “Camas grows in the meadow. Blue-purple blossoms. Bulbs were used by the native people for food, though a man best know the difference between that and death camas before he puts anything in a pot.”
The little girl withdrew her hand from the flower.
Lottie smiled. “This one is safe to touch.”
“Aye. Safe to touch. Not safe to eat unless you know your business.”
“Do you know your business?”
His gaze moved to Lottie. “With flowers?”
“With the ridge.”
“Enough to stay alive on it.”
“That sounds like a useful beginning.”
A small warning moved through his eyes.
Lottie corrected herself at once. “A wise beginning.”
His shoulders relaxed by a fraction. Peterson crossed to the table and looked down at the flower without touching it. “Stem’s wrong in your drawing there.”
Lottie glanced at the open botany volume. “Yes. I thought so.”
“This book is eastern?”
“Painfully.”
He looked at the engraving. “Still pretty.”
The comment was quiet enough that Mrs. Beck, by the window, missed it. Lottie did not. She looked at the page, then at him. “Would you help me make a local nature section?”
Peterson’s brows lowered. “A what?”
“A place for pressed plants from Wild Rose Ridge. Not only the names from the book, but what people here call them, where they grow, and when they bloom. The children might like it. New brides too. I should like to know what belongs here.”
The last words slipped out before she had considered them.
What belongs here.
Peterson looked down at the flower. “Plants don’t trouble themselves over belonging. They grow where they can.”
“That is not entirely true. Some need shade. Some need rocky soil. Some need water. Some will not bloom unless the conditions are right.”
He looked at her then, and Lottie wished, not for the first time, that being looked at by him was less unsettling.
He did not stare the way the dock men had.
He did not glance over her bonnet, figure, or dress.
His attention rested on her as if every word mattered.
Lottie felt herself blush from the tips of her ears down to her toes.
After a moment, he looked away. “You’ll want clean paper.”
“I have some.”
“And weight.”
“Books are useful for that.”
His mouth almost surrendered a smile. “They would be.”
The little girl bounced on her toes. “Can we press this one?”
“If Miss Bellamy allows it,” Peterson said.
Lottie’s heart gave an unexpected squeeze at the ease with which he had made the library hers in front of others.
“I allow it,” she said.
The next ten minutes became a lesson.
Peterson did not take charge. He stood beside the table and offered what he knew only when asked, as if knowledge was something to lend, not something to rule a room. He explained camas, salal, foxglove, and the wild roses that grew near the road where the trees opened to sun.
“Foxglove is pretty,” he said, tapping the engraving lightly with his left forefinger. “Not for tea.”
Mrs. Beck paused with a cookie halfway to her mouth. “Who is making tea from foxglove?”
“Foolish people,” Peterson said.
Mrs. Hanford nodded. “Then we shall add a rule.”
“No eating the library flowers?” Cornelia suggested.
“That seems broadly wise,” Lottie said.
The little girl laughed. Peterson’s mouth moved in response, quick and unguarded. Lottie saw the smile begin before he caught it. She liked that smile more than she had any right to like something so small.
They pressed the camas between two sheets of paper, then slid it into an old account book Cornelia had donated for scrap.
Peterson used his left hand for most of the work.
When the flower shifted, his right hand came forward to steady the page.
Lottie kept her gaze on the flower and gave him the dignity of ordinary silence.
His fingers were scarred and stiff, the two shortened ones resting awkwardly against the paper.
He held the page down just long enough for Lottie to smooth the stem into place.
For one breath, her gloved hand worked beside his injured one, close enough that she could see the pale pull of old frostbite across his knuckles.
She wanted to say something kind.
Instead, she said, “If we press it crooked, Mrs. Hanford will create a rule about botanical posture.”
Peterson’s thumb shifted on the page. “That would be a hard rule to enforce,” he said.
“Not for Mrs. Hanford.”
“No. I suppose not.”
The flower lay flat at last.
Lottie closed the account book and placed Shakespeare on top of it.
Peterson looked at the stack. “That’s a heavy press.”
“Mr. Shakespeare enjoys feeling important.”
“He does strike me that way.”
“You’ve read him?”
His hand withdrew from the page. A small thing, but enough to make Lottie wish she had asked with more care.
“Some,” he said.
“Which play?”
He looked toward the window. “Bits of this and that.”
“I like Much Ado About Nothing,” she said. “Beatrice makes Delly seem meek, which I appreciate because it proves my sister could be worse.”
That earned her a quiet huff of laughter. “Miss Odelia is not meek,” Peterson said.
“No. She is a one-woman weather event in worn boots.”
Cornelia laughed from the shelf.
Peterson’s eyes warmed. He glanced toward the door, then back at Lottie. “Simms does not seem troubled by the weather.”
“Mr. Simms looks at Delly as if he enjoys standing in the storm.”
The words came softly, but they were out before she could call them back. Peterson studied her.
Lottie lowered her gaze to the account book. “She does not notice.”
“Your sister?”
“She notices everything except that.” Lottie ran one finger along the edge of Shakespeare’s cover. “When he looks at her, she thinks he is evaluating the argument. He is not. He is pleased by her, and that cannot be checked off in one of her columns.”
“Is that what you want?” Peterson asked.
Her breath caught. The surrounding room was not empty, and she wasn’t sure how much she should say out loud.
Cornelia was still sorting near the shelf.
Mrs. Schulte had taken the little girl outside to show her where to wash flower stains from her hands. Mrs. Beck and Mrs. Hanford left, discussing the hazards of poetry as they went out the door. Still, Peterson’s question seemed to reach Lottie alone.
She could have laughed it off. She could have said something airy about all women wanting to be admired.
Instead, she answered carefully, her voice low.
“I should like to be looked at as if my presence were welcome.”
Peterson’s gaze dropped to the Tennyson beneath his arm. After a moment, he said, “A man would have to be blind not to welcome you.”
The words came rough and low, as though pulled from him before he had decided whether they were safe.
Lottie went quiet.
Peterson looked as if he regretted speaking and was glad he had said it, both at once. He reached for his hat from the table, then stopped because Tennyson was still tucked beneath his arm.
Lottie found her voice. “That is a very kind thing to say.”
“It was not kindness.” Her fingers tightened against the edge of the table as he glanced her way. “It was only true.”
Oh.
The word moved through her without a sound.
Cornelia turned a page somewhere behind them with heroic tact. Lottie tried to think of anything sensible to say. She had many words at her disposal. Too many, Delly often said. Yet the right ones had scattered like frightened birds.
Peterson saved her by looking toward the shelf. “You said local nature.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll need more than flowers.”
“What else?”
“Leaves. Bark. Maybe feathers, if you can keep children from stealing them. Tracks, if someone draws them.”
“Could you?”
“Could I what?”
“Draw tracks?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Some.”
“Would you?”
“I have work.”
“Yes.”
“The camp does not pay me to draw squirrel feet for a library.”
“No.”
He looked at her for a long second. At last, he sighed, which Lottie was recognizing as the sound of Peterson losing an argument with his own better nature.
“I can draw a few.”
Joy rose in her so quickly she had to look down at the book press.
“Thank you.”
“It is only tracks.”
“It is not only tracks.”
“It will be once they are drawn.”
“You are determined to make every thoughtful thing sound smaller than it is.”
His jaw worked once, but not in anger. More as if the words had found their mark, and he needed a moment with them.
“I should get back,” he said.
Lottie nodded. “Of course.”
He moved toward the ledger, then paused.
“Tennyson is not due until Tuesday,” she said.
“I know.”
“Are you returning it early?”
“No.”
The answer warmed her more than it should have.
He glanced at the botany volume still open on the table. “I wanted to ask about that one.”
“The botany book?”
“I want to look at the flower section.”
“For the library?”
“For the library,” he said.
Lottie carried the botany volume to the ledger table and opened the book to the inside cover. “You may borrow it. Though it is heavy.”
“I noticed.”
“And eastern.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“If you put foxglove in tea, I shall be very cross.”
His mouth moved again. “I will bear that in mind.”
He signed the ledger below his first entry.
Peterson.
Still only the surname.
He picked up the botany volume with his left hand and tucked it carefully against the Tennyson. Two of her books now rested beneath his arm.
The sight did something deeply unreasonable to her heart. At the door, he stopped and turned halfway back.
“Miss Bellamy.”
“Yes?”
He seemed to consider one phrase, discard it, and choose another with care. “I will bring it back clean.”
“I know you will.”
His gaze held hers. Lottie felt the weight of what she had said. Not I hope. Not please do. I know.
Trust could be a frightening thing to hand to a man. It could be frightening to receive too, judging by the way he stood with her books against his side and a quiet crease between his brows.
Then he touched the brim of his hat with two fingers. “Good day, Lottie.”
He left before she could answer.
Lottie remained by the table, one hand resting beside the ledger, while his footsteps crossed the porch and faded toward the street.
Lottie.
Not Miss Bellamy.
Not Charlotte.
Lottie.
Cornelia came to stand beside her after a moment. “That was nicely done.”
Lottie looked at the open doorway. “The flower pressing?”
“No,” Cornelia said gently. “The waiting.”
The sound of her own name in his voice stayed with her after he had gone. Lottie closed the ledger and laid her palm over the cover.
A library was built of many patient things. Shelves. Ledgers. Returned books. Names offered when the giver was ready.
Today, Peterson had borrowed a second book.
He had given her one word back.
Her name.