Chapter 12
The squeak outside room six had been bothering Jonas for four days.
Every time someone crossed the second-floor hall, the same floorboard complained beneath their weight. The sound carried down the stairwell, sharp enough to be heard from the common room when the inn was quiet.
By midmorning, Jonas had decided he could tolerate it no longer.
He knelt in the hallway with a hammer, a handful of square-cut nails, and Percy crouched beside him holding a lantern despite the daylight coming through the window at the far end. The boy had insisted better light was necessary for proper workmanship.
Jonas suspected he simply wanted an excuse to avoid carrying linens.
“Step there.”
Percy planted one boot on the board.
It squeaked.
Jonas slid the thin edge of a knife along the seam and found the loose spot near the joist. His thigh protested when he shifted onto one knee, but the pain was mild enough to ignore.
“There.” He set a nail at an angle and tapped it carefully into the board. “Try it again.”
Percy bounced once.
Silence.
His face brightened. “That’s all it needed?”
“Usually.”
Percy examined the repair carefully. “Martha said we’d have to pull the whole board up.”
“Martha has other things to think about.”
“That means you think she was wrong.”
Jonas sat back on his heel. “That means I enjoy sleeping indoors too much to answer.”
Percy grinned and moved ahead to the next loose board.
They had been working through the upper corridor for nearly an hour, finding small repairs Jonas could manage without putting much strain on his leg.
It was slower going than he liked. Before his injury, he could have finished the entire hallway before breakfast. Now he had to stop whenever the muscles around the wound tightened.
Percy never complained about the pauses.
Instead, he filled them with questions.
Most concerned horses.
“You ever raised one from a foal?”
“Several.”
Percy lowered himself cross-legged onto the runner. “Martha says it’s harder than people think.”
“She’s right.”
“She says everything with horses is harder than people think.”
“That’s also right.”
Percy picked up one of the unused nails and rolled it between his fingers. “She’s teaching me.”
Jonas looked at him. “To raise horses?”
“Not exactly. Everything.”
The boy began listing lessons on his fingers.
How to check a hoof for stones. How to tell when a horse was favoring one leg.
How much grain was too much. Why a frightened horse should never be cornered.
Martha had even begun teaching him how to keep stable accounts so he could understand what feed cost and how much the inn charged guests for boarding.
“She does it at night,” Percy added. “After supper, if nobody needs her.”
Jonas pictured Martha after a full day of running the inn, standing beneath a stable lantern while Percy peppered her with questions.
“She must be tired by then.”
Percy shrugged. “She says she isn’t.”
Jonas smiled to himself.
Of course she did.
He reached for another nail. “What do you want to do with all that knowledge?”
Percy’s answer came without hesitation. “Raise horses.”
“Here?”
“Maybe.” He glanced toward the window where the stable roof was visible beyond the yard. “I want my own place someday. Not a big one. Just enough land for a good, full stable.”
The boy spoke with such certainty that Jonas stopped working.
At twelve, Jonas himself had still believed adults possessed answers simply because they were older. By Percy’s age, Reuben had already learned otherwise.
“You’ll need to learn more than feeding and grooming.”
Percy leaned forward. “Like what?”
“Breeding. Training. Treating injuries. How to judge a horse before you buy it. How to tell whether a man selling one is lying to you.”
“Can you teach me?” His face lit up at once, his whole body moving as if eager to get started at once.
The question came so quickly that Jonas laughed.
“I can teach you some.”
Percy’s entire face changed. “Really?”
“If Martha agrees.”
“She will.”
“You sound awfully sure of that,” Jonas laughed.
“She likes when I learn things.”
There was pride in his voice.
Jonas understood then that the lessons meant more to the boy than horses. Martha was giving him something Percy had probably had very little of before arriving at the inn: the expectation of a future.
Jonas picked up the hammer again. “Then we’ll start when my leg is strong enough to spend more time in the stable.”
Percy scrambled to his feet. “I could get the books out tonight.”
“One lesson at a time.”
“I know where Martha keeps paper too. I can make notes.”
“Percy.”
The boy stopped halfway toward the stairs.
Jonas pointed at the floor. “We have six more boards to do.”
Percy returned immediately, though he spent the rest of the job asking whether Jonas thought a person needed more than ten acres to raise good horses.
By the time they finished, Jonas’s leg had begun to ache in earnest.
He ignored it.
That proved to be a mistake.
An hour later, he was in the barn shifting a small armful of hay from the loft pile when Martha came through the doors.
Cold daylight followed her inside. She had a basket hooked over one arm and a pencil tucked behind her ear, but the instant she saw him, she stopped.
“Put that down.”
Jonas glanced at the hay in his arms. “Good afternoon to you too.”
“Jonas.”
Something in her tone made Percy, who was sweeping near the opposite stalls, suddenly very interested in his work.
Jonas lowered the hay onto the feeding rack.
Martha crossed the aisle, her boots crunching over bits of straw frozen into the packed earth. “Dr. Keller told you to take it slowly.”
“I am taking it slowly.”
“You spent the morning crawling around upstairs fixing floors.”
“Kneeling.”
“And now you’re lifting hay.”
“It’s hay, Martha. Not a piano.”
Her mouth tightened.
She set the basket on a barrel and looked him over as though searching for visible evidence of damage. “If you open that wound again, you could end up right where you started. Worse, if infection gets into it—”
“I know.”
“No, you know the words. That doesn’t mean you’re behaving as though you understand them.”
Before Jonas could answer, another voice came from behind the stalls.
“You should listen to her.”
Silas stepped into view carrying a currycomb.
Jonas had not heard him enter.
Martha stiffened.
The change was small but immediate. Her shoulders drew back, and the irritation she had aimed at Jonas vanished beneath something more guarded.
Silas seemed not to notice.
Or pretended not to.
He nodded toward the remaining hay. “I can handle that. Mrs. Bellamy seems determined to keep you from killing yourself.”
Jonas glanced at Martha.
For an instant, she looked ready to object. Her lips parted, and her gaze sharpened on Silas.
Then she stopped herself.
“Fine.” She picked up the basket. “Silas can finish here.”
Jonas did not miss the reluctance in her voice.
Martha turned toward him. “Come with me.”
He followed.
Outside, wind moved loose snow across the yard in thin streaks. Jonas waited until they were halfway to the inn before speaking.
“There’s something about that man you aren’t telling me.”
Martha kept walking.
“Silas?”
“You know which man.”
Her pace quickened slightly.
Jonas matched it despite the stabbing pain in his thigh. “You barely look at him unless you have to. When he appears, you tense like you’re waiting for something to happen.”
Martha opened the kitchen door. Warmth and the smell of baking bread rolled over them.
“You’re imagining things.”
“I don’t think I am.”
She set the basket on the worktable harder than necessary.
“It’s nothing, Jonas.”
The finality in her voice stopped him.
Not because he believed her, but because he remembered the last time he pushed. That was a clear warning in her tone, and he would heed it.
For now.
Martha turned toward his leg. “Sit down.”
He almost smiled at the obvious change of subject.
Then he saw her expression of disapproval.
“You’re limping.”
“I’m healing.”
“You’re limping while healing. Sit.”
Jonas lowered himself into a chair near the stove.
Martha disappeared into the pantry and returned with a basin of warm water, clean cloth, bandages, and a small tin. She pulled another chair close and waited while he loosened his trousers enough for her to inspect the wound.
The skin around the healing cut had reddened.
Martha’s face tightened.
“I told you.”
“It doesn’t hurt much.”
“That is not the standard by which we judge whether something is infected.”
“It isn’t infected.”
“Not yet.” She tsked. “We seem to be going two steps forward, three steps back with your healing process. You’ve hardly taken a moment’s rest at all since we went to help the Dalrymples.”
She cleaned the area carefully, her movements more deliberate than her irritation suggested. Jonas watched her open the small tin and gather a little salve onto two fingers.
“What’s that?”
“Something Dr. Keller left for inflammation.”
The salve smelled faintly of herbs and rendered fat. Martha spread a thin layer around the wound, avoiding the most tender portion of the scar.
Jonas drew a slow breath when her fingers passed over a sore spot.
She looked up immediately. “That hurt.”
“A little.”
Martha gave him a look that said she was adding the answer to a growing list of reasons he could not be trusted with his own recovery.
When she finished wrapping his leg, Martha tied the linen securely and sat back. “You are resting this afternoon.”
Jonas adjusted his trouser leg. “I will if you will.”
Martha drew back, staring at him as though she had misheard. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I have an inn to run.”
“And I have floorboards to fix.”
“You have an injured leg.”
“You have an inn with half a wing missing.”
Martha planted both hands on her hips. “That is not a medical condition.”
Jonas leaned back in the chair. “Then I suppose we’re both working.”
For a moment, Martha could only stare at him.
The nerve of the man.