Chapter Nine #2
“That does sound serious.”
“He married within the month.”
“Then perhaps she is effective.”
“Danger often is.”
They crossed behind the church and climbed the narrow path toward the meadow. Wild grass brushed Lottie’s skirt. The air smelled of sun-warmed earth and pine. The town’s sounds fell behind them by degrees, replaced by birds, wind, and the distant river working its way over stones.
Peterson walked slightly ahead of her, then stopped. Ahead, the path rose unevenly near a cluster of rocks.
“There’s a root.”
“I see it.”
“Your skirt might not.”
He stepped aside and held out his left hand.
The offer was plain. Practical. No flourish, no gallant speech, no claim. Only his hand, which was waiting between them.
Lottie placed her gloved fingers in his.
His grip closed carefully around hers.
Steady. Warm. Stronger than she expected and gentler than he seemed to trust himself to be. He helped her over the root, then another stone, and when she reached level ground, his hand remained around hers for one breath longer than necessary.
Not by accident, but not quite by intention either, perhaps.
Lottie looked down at their joined hands. Peterson noticed and released her at once.
“Ground’s uneven,” he said.
“Yes.”
He kept walking. Lottie followed, her fingers remembering the shape of his grip long after the touch had ended.
The meadow opened above the churchyard in a wash of green and blue-purple blooms. Camas flowers lifted slender and bright among the grasses.
Pink blossoms half-open to the sun, wild roses climbed along a rough edge where the trees began again.
Bees worked busily among them with more purpose than the Busy Bees themselves.
Lottie forgot to speak.
Peterson watched her from the side of the path. “This is it.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a meadow.”
“It is a beautiful meadow.”
He did not argue, though she had the feeling he wanted to.
She kneeled carefully near the camas, setting the botany book on a flat stone and opening her papers.
Peterson crouched several feet away and pointed out the shape of the leaves, the stem, the way the blossoms clustered.
He did not crowd her. He let her draw the flower herself, correcting only when she looked at him.
“That line should be longer,” he said once.
“You may say my flower looks like a feather duster if it does.”
“It does not.”
“That was not very convincing.”
“Only because it looks more like a church bell.”
Lottie looked down at her drawing, then up at him.
His face gave nothing away. Then she saw the corner of his mouth betray him. She gave a little laugh.
“You are teasing me.”
“A little.”
“I am wounded.” Her lips puckered in a slight pout.
“You asked.”
“I asked for honesty, not botanical cruelty.”
The smile came then, small but real.
It changed his entire demeanor, and Lottie felt her insides clench. He looked younger when he smiled, and less burdened by whatever was on his mind.
Lottie wanted, with sudden fierceness, to see that smile again.
Instead of saying so, she bent over her drawing. “Very well. Church bell. I shall improve it.”
She managed to improve the drawing, mostly because Peterson’s advice was annoyingly good.
When the camas was drawn and one blossom set between clean paper, Lottie stood and moved toward the wild roses.
Peterson followed but stopped her before she reached for the nearest bloom.
“Mind the thorns.”
“I see them.”
“No, you see the flowers.”
She looked back at him. “That is a fair correction.”
He reached past her with his left hand and lifted one cane enough to show where the thorns hooked beneath the leaves. His sleeve brushed the edge of her glove. Lottie froze, not because she feared the thorns.
“Choose one not fully open,” he said. “If you mean to press it.”
“Do you know how to press flowers?”
His hand remained on the rose cane. “It would make sense the delicate petals won’t tear if the bloom is still slightly closed.”
“Did you learn that from your mother?”
“Aye.”
“She pressed them?”
“In her Bible. Leaves mostly. Flowers when they held their color.” He looked at the bloom rather than at Lottie.
“Said a person ought to keep proof of summer in winter. Then she would quote a Bible verse, ‘Consider how the wildflowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.’”
Lottie’s throat tightened. “I like that very much.”
“So did I.”
He released the cane and reached for a smaller rosebud tucked beneath the open blossoms. “This one might do.”
“Will you press it?”
His hand paused.
“For the field pages,” she added. “Only if you wish.”
Peterson looked at the rosebud. Then he took out his pocketknife, opened it with his left hand, and cut the stem cleanly.
He did not give the flower to her.
Instead, he opened the botany book to a blank scrap page and set the bud between two clean sheets with the care of a man handling something easily ruined. His injured hand came out long enough to hold the paper steady while his left arranged the stem.
This time, Lottie did look.
Not staring. Only looking, because the hand was his, and she did not want to pretend otherwise forever.
Peterson noticed. His fingers withdrew from the page.
Lottie met his gaze. “You chose a good one.”
He held her eyes for a moment, searching for pity and not finding it.
Then he looked back at the book. “It may keep.”
“I hope it does.”
He closed the botany volume around the flower and secured it with the strap.
Lottie smiled down at the book. “Now the eastern botany volume is improving.”
“By being corrected?”
“By holding proof of summer.”
He glanced at her then, and the look was so gentle she nearly forgot they stood in broad daylight above a churchyard.
Peterson cleared his throat and picked up the book. “I should get back.”
“Yes. Of course.”
They walked down more quietly than they had climbed. At the uneven place in the path, he offered his left hand again. This time, Lottie took it without looking surprised.
This time, he did not release her the instant the ground leveled.
They walked three steps with her hand in his before the church roof came into sight. He let go slowly enough it felt like a choice rather than a retreat.
At the back of the meeting hall, he handed her the field papers but kept the botany volume tucked under his arm.
“For pressing,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll bring it back when it’s done.”
“I trust you.”
His gaze rested on her face.
Trust did not sit lightly between them. It had weight. Not the heavy, frightening kind, but the kind that asked to be carried with care.
Peterson touched the brim of his hat. “Good day, Lottie.”
Her name again.
She smiled. “Good day, Peterson.”
He left with her botany book, her Tennyson, and one small wild rose pressed between the pages.
Lottie watched him go from the meeting hall doorway until he turned toward the camp road. Then she returned to the table, where the track drawings waited beside the new field pages.
Cornelia came in through the side door a moment later, carrying exactly no inkpot and looking entirely unsurprised.
“How was the church office?” Lottie asked.
“Very restful.”
“You did not go there.”
“No.”
Lottie sat and picked up Peterson’s drawing of the deer track. “He said his mother kept pressed flowers in her Bible.”
Cornelia’s teasing softened into something gentler. “That was generous of him to tell you.”
“I know.”
“And the meadow?”
Lottie looked toward the open door, where sunlight lay across the floor in a bright, slanted shape.
“He showed me what belongs here,” she said.
Cornelia sat beside her. “Did that help?”
Lottie touched the blank field page, already imagining where the pressed rose would go when Peterson brought it back.
“Yes,” she said. “I think it did.”
By evening, Lottie had copied his track drawings neatly onto the first field page and left space for the rose. She did not write his name below the sketches. Not yet. Peterson was still the only name he had given the ledger, and she would honor that.
Beside the blank place reserved for the pressed wild rose, she wrote in small careful letters: Proof of summer for winter.
Then she closed the field pages and set them on the shelf.
Outside, the camp road faded into dusk, and somewhere up among the pines, Peterson had two of her books and one flower held safe between them.
It was not courtship in any form Mrs. Beck would recognize.
Lottie was thinking she did not mind.