When Jerin was very young, he had been madly in love with her. He recognized signs of it in Doric now.
Their infatuation came, he decided, as a side effect of her being the only female they closely associated with who wasn’t blood related.
“Miss Skinner.” He greeted her with a smile. “You’re going to be on this boat too?”
His teacher turned in surprise, smiled with pleasure to see him, then frowned. “Master Whistler, you know that a proper young man never starts a conversation with a woman outside of his family when in public.”
Jerin recoiled, hurt. “But I’ve talked to you lots of times.”
“I know, lad, but I shouldn’t have let you. ‘Once’ leads to ‘always.’ You’re leaving Heron Landing, where everyone knows not to mess with your sisters, and your sisters know where they live.”
Jerin nodded. “I know not to talk to strangers, but you’re Miss Skinner.”
Abie Skinner smiled. “Thank you, Master Whistler.”
“So, you’re going to be on this boat?”
She tried not to grin, then shook her head and laughed. “Yes, Master Whistler. I’m going home.”
“For a visit?”
“No, for good. I got a letter from Eldest.” She patted her pocket, and a paper crinkled under the pat.
“My scattered sisters and I have finally accrued enough money to purchase a husband of modest breeding.”
“How wonderful!” Then the implication sank in. “You’re not coming back?”
“No.” She grinned widely. “Someone else will have to force basic figures and reading onto willful young minds.”
“My sisters will miss you.” He could think only that Doric would be crushed.
“Some of them. I will miss those ones.”
They had two cabins on the second deck. Jerin would share a cabin with one of his sisters. Captain Tern would sleep in the other cabin. They worked out a schedule where at all times at least two of the women would be awake while the other two slept. One of his sleeping sisters would always be in the bunk under the window while he slept. It was as safe as they could make the trip.
That afternoon he took a stroll on the sundeck with Summer and Corelle. He had stepped out of his room intending to pull down his veil. The unobstructed sight of the sunshine on the water checked him.
He climbed the stairs to the sundeck with his sisters trailing him.
Jerin expected Corelle or Summer to say something about his veil being up, but they didn’t. Feeling someplace between guilty and free, he walked the sundeck, more interested in the fellow passengers.
They gave him wide smiles and nods of greeting, but, with quick looks at his armed sisters, didn’t speak to him.
At the stern, over the churning paddle wheel, he met Miss Skinner.
“ Tch, Mr. Whistler, what are you doing?” Miss Skinner reached up and tugged down the veil. “There are people on this boat not to be trusted. If they thought you were an ugly thing behind that veil, they might leave you alone. Don’t tempt them by showing them how stunningly beautiful you are.”
“I’m not stunningly beautiful.”
“Most women only see a few men in their lives. Their father. Perhaps their grandfather. If they are lucky, a brother and their husband. Any other men they see are always veiled. To them, anything with both eyes and sound teeth is a handsome man. My family are portrait painters. My hand is not as good as my sisters‘, so I decided to teach instead, to see a bit of the world. Before I left, though, I had seen an extraordinary number of men and paintings of men. You, Mr. Jerin Whistler, are the most stunningly beautiful man I have ever seen.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” She twitched the veil, artfully arranging the fold at his neck. “So don’t tempt the scruffy lot on this boat more than your mere presence already does.”
“Yes, Miss Skinner.”
The next morning it was raining. Captain Tern was guarding him while his sisters slept. Miss Skinner came to the door, bearing a gift.
“Here, I have something for you to look at.” It was a large book, almost three feet square. She set it down on the table and opened it to reveal maps done in gorgeous color. “This is an atlas. It has maps of all of the countries of the world.”
“I wish I could have gone to school,” Jerin murmured.
“ Tch, I wouldn’t have wanted the responsibility of keeping you safe, Mr. Whistler. It would have been too easy for someone to steal you away, and then where would I be? All alone in Heron Landing with the Whistler girls out for my blood.”
“Are you happy about getting married?” Jerin asked.
“To tell the truth, I’m giddy as a girl.”
“Even though you don’t know your husband at all?”
“Honestly”-she blushed-“I haven’t thought much about him, just the babies. We had a brother, who was killed a year before we would have swapped him for a husband. Maybe if we hadn’t grown up so sure we would be married, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. Some days, it’s all I can think about, having children of our own.”
“Really?”
She nodded unhappily. “The first day of school and the last are always the hardest. The seven-year-olds come in that first day, oh so little and darling. You just want to cuddle them. You try to keep your distance, but at the end of the year, when it’s going to be months before you see them again-it just breaks my heart.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she scolded.
“I mean-well, I guess I mean that I feel sorry for you.”
“Don’t. I’m getting married. We’ll have baskets and bushels of babies and get as blase about them as everyone else.”
“Blase?” he asked, unsure what the word meant.
“Casual. Careless.” She defined the word using ones he did know. “Ever been to a social function and watch the mothers with their babies? Oh, you can’t hold the little boys-no one but family gets to hold the boys- but they pass the baby girls off like sacks of wheat. Anyone can hold them as long as they want. And they sigh over the fact that the baby girls weren’t born boys. You want to scream at them how lucky they are, and how they shouldn’t take these healthy babies so lightly. And at least once a week you wonder if you’re still young enough to carry a healthy child to term and survive delivering it. or maybe you should avoid all the risk, even though the thought of not being pregnant at least once is like putting a gun to your head and-”
She shuddered to a stop, and wiped tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say things like that to you. I’m happy. I truly am.”
He reached out and covered her hand. “I’m sure things will be fine.”
“Indeed. Holy Mothers are kind.” She sniffed, and forced herself to smile. “Well. I’ll leave this with you to study. Eldest can drop it at my cabin later.”
With that, she withdrew.
“She should have gone to a crib,” Raven murmured after Miss Skinner’s footsteps had faded away.
“Got herself pregnant before this. It’s warped her.”
He could not help but feel that she was right. “Are you married, Captain Tern?”
“No. Don’t particularly want to be. I don’t get along well with my sisters, so I try to stay away from home. Not everyone fits the molds of society.”
“Do you want children?”
Captain Tern considered the question and finally shrugged. “I don’t like small children. Their noise-that high- pitched squealing-and energy level grate on my nerves. You can’t reason with them. If you try bribing them, then they get spoiled and throw fits. My baby sisters drove me out of my home. I couldn’t stand them. I certainly don’t have a desire to raise any of my own. Still. I can’t imagine not having a family. I send part of my paycheck home every week, and visit when I get lonely.”
The first deck of the steamboat had a dining room. They had avoided it the first night, eating instead from the food hamper. For breakfast and lunch of the next day, one of his sisters carried sandwiches back to their cabins to supplement the dwindling cache. By the second night, the food was gone. Reluctantly, they went down for
