Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles] by Key on the Quilt

Author:Key on the Quilt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Things were changing for the better in the female department, but Jane couldn’t bring herself to care. She lay awake at night replaying Max’s last visit, lost in a morass of conflicting emotions she couldn’t seem to sort through. He’d kept his word. He hadn’t come back. She should be thankful for that, shouldn’t she? Part of her felt relief, but then things got confused. As long as she could picture Max in the office in Plum Creek—and demand that he stay there—she’d rarely thought about him. Now that she didn’t know where he was, she couldn’t seem to stop.

Maybe thoughts of Max were just her way of avoiding thoughts of Rose… with a new mother, and Jane all but forgotten. Even if she managed to fall asleep, let little Grace so much as peep and Jane jolted awake, thinking about those wonderful days when Rose was a baby and Thomas was alive. Had it really happened, or was she remembering a novel she’d read—someone else’s love story?

She tried to distract herself from the downward spiral. Sometimes it worked. For a while. She sat in on Mrs. McKenna’s lessons just to have something to do. Helping Agnes and Susan Horst work through their lessons for the next day took up more time. Those two had taken a fierce interest in learning, as if they’d been thirsty for a very long time and just discovered the only thing that would slake that thirst. Jane was happy for them. She just couldn’t seem to catch the same enthusiasm… for anything.

She didn’t even notice she hadn’t been eating much, until one morning when she went to button her skirt and it nearly slipped off her hips. Embarrassed, she looked around, hoping no one had seen. After breakfast, she took a dart or two right through the waistband as soon as Miss Dawson produced the sewing supplies. She didn’t think Miss Dawson saw her do it, and she was glad. She didn’t have the energy to cope with concern directed her way. There were no grace notes falling on behalf of Jane Prescott, and she didn’t want anyone trying to convince her otherwise. The idea just made her tired. And then a grace note plopped down beside her—in spite of her attempts to dodge it.

It was the afternoon the guards delivered four sewing machines to be lined up in a row beneath the windows on the west side of the parlor. Mr. Underhill was supervising instead of hauling. Jane supposed that was because he was still healing from his encounter with Pearl Brand. Or maybe it was that he’d been promoted. People called him Sergeant Underhill now. Jane didn’t think he liked it. Nor, she observed, did Adam Selleck, because Underhill’s promotion meant he was actually in authority now, a reality that obviously galled Selleck no end.

Jane didn’t take pleasure in much of anything these days, but she did like knowing that someone like Martin Underhill was in a position to control Adam Selleck’s more prurient tendencies.

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