Chapter 12 #3
He watched her leave the kitchen and wondered whether she intended to check on another guest despite having just agreed to rest. Instead, she returned several minutes later carrying an old leather-bound sketchbook and a short stick of charcoal.
Jonas’s attention went immediately to the sketchbook.
Martha stopped beside his chair. “I wondered, would you let me draw you?”
He had not expected the question. “You want to?”
“If you can remain still long enough.”
Jonas glanced pointedly at his injured leg. “You’ve made that fairly unavoidable.”
“Then we’re agreed.”
Martha carried a chair closer to the kitchen window where the afternoon light was stronger. Jonas followed more carefully, lowering himself onto the bench beside the wall while she settled opposite him.
The inn had entered one of its rare quiet spells. Somewhere upstairs, a maid moved furniture across a floor. The kitchen stove ticked as the iron cooled, and the faint smell of yeast from Eliza’s dough mixed with the sharper scent of charcoal when Martha opened the sketchbook.
She studied him for several seconds before making the first mark.
Jonas shifted instinctively.
Her eyes narrowed. “You agreed to sit still.”
“I moved an inch.”
“I noticed.”
“That seems ominous.”
Martha smiled without looking away from the page.
The charcoal moved in short, sure strokes.
Jonas watched her more than he watched the drawing.
Her entire manner changed while she worked.
The constant awareness she carried through the inn seemed to narrow to whatever was directly in front of her.
She no longer glanced toward the doorway when footsteps passed or checked the clock above the stove.
Her gaze moved over his face with an attention that should have made him uncomfortable.
Instead, he found himself enjoying it.
After several quiet minutes, Martha studied the left side of his jaw.
“How did you get this?”
Jonas knew which scar she meant without touching it. “A wolf.”
Her charcoal stopped.
“A wolf?”
“I was younger then.”
“That doesn’t really explain much.”
“It explains why I was foolish enough to get close to one.”
Martha’s mouth curved as she returned to the page. “Were you hunting it?”
“No. It had been caught in a trap.”
That seemed to surprise her more.
“You tried to free it?”
“I did free it.”
“And it thanked you by biting you?”
“More or less.”
A quiet laugh escaped her. She tilted her head, studying the scar again before adding another line to the sketch.
Jonas let his gaze settle on her face.
A narrow scar cut through one eyebrow, small enough that he rarely noticed it unless the light caught it.
“What about yours?”
Martha’s hand paused.
Only for a fraction of a second.
Then she resumed drawing.
“I tried to cut my own hair when I was a child.”
Jonas looked from the scar to the charcoal in her hand. “Your eyebrow was involved?”
“Unfortunately.”
“How much hair were you attempting to remove?”
Martha’s expression turned solemn. “I was ambitious.”
He laughed.
She smiled too, but her attention dropped immediately back to the page.
Jonas watched her for another moment.
Something about the answer felt practiced. Perhaps everyone had childhood stories they had told often enough that the words came automatically. Still, the tiny pause before it lodged in his mind.
He let it go.
Martha worked until the light shifted away from the window.
When she finally lowered the charcoal, there was a dark smudge along the side of her smallest finger and another near the heel of her hand.
“I think that’s all I’m going to get before the light goes.”
She blew gently across the page, then turned the sketchbook toward him.
Jonas leaned closer.
He had expected a likeness.
What she had made was more exact than that.
The scar along his jaw was there, as was the slight bend in his nose where Reuben had accidentally struck him with a length of timber years ago. She had caught the few strands of hair that never remained in his braid and the lines beside his eyes he only noticed when shaving.
She had not made him younger or more handsome, she had drawn him exactly as is, but with a warmth he would not have expected. Jonas took the sketchbook carefully, holding it by the edges to avoid smearing the charcoal.
“You notice everything.”
Martha looked at the page rather than at him. “Not everything.”
Her answer was quiet.
Jonas studied her for a moment. With every day, he learned something more about her.
Not too long ago, Martha Bellamy had been little more than the stubborn innkeeper who found him half-dead beside a river.
Now he knew she could ride hard country alone, set fish traps, tend wounds, teach a boy to keep stable accounts, and make a face appear on paper with a piece of charcoal.
He knew she missed traveling. He knew she had been lonely as a child and had loved her husband.
He also knew Silas Mercer made her afraid.
That remained the piece that did not fit.
Jonas closed the sketchbook gently and handed it back.
He wanted to ask.
Instead, he rested his leg more comfortably on the stool and watched Martha brush charcoal from her fingers.
Whatever she had not told him was still hers to keep.
For now.