It was the first laughter since her father’s death. Weariness threaded down her shoulders. If only she could stay.
For two days Beti kept close to the house, one ear tuned toward the dirt lane to town. Doc attended the sick in the small office attached to the house, and Rosalee offered reasons why Beti should stay with them in their cozy little dwelling. Beti longed to accept the generous offer no more so then when she sat near an open window adding rows to the latest project on her knitting needles. Sitting in this room where they’d sat so often. Her father’s laughter ringing into the night. His voice still so vivid. She didn’t want to think of the time when it would soften to a whisper. Tears spilled down onto the fiber.
Rosalee joined her with her work basket.
“Did ye father ever tell ye of yer mother’s family?”
Beti sensed a story and tucked her feet under her skirts and brought her needles to rest in her lap. “I know they were seafaring.”
“Of course, he would tell ye that part.” Rosalee smiled. “Did he tell ye the situation of her family?”
“That her father was a hard man with no tender heart for his daughter?”
“Ye mother thought ye father would tell ye, but perhaps he ran out of time and forgot? No matter. Yer mother was a princess.”
Beti’s eyes filled. “Father always said she was the queen of his heart.”
“Yes, but she was a real queen.”
Beti dabbed her tears with the slightly damp handkerchief she’d been using all afternoon to help contain her grief as the image of her father’s face twinkling at her swam before her mind. “What do you mean?”
“Up in that cold northern place that she came from she was a princess set to inherit the throne when her father died. Haaken lived a long life. By the time he was gone, Sigrid had already made a new life with yer father and ye.”
Beti stilled as memories stacked and played across her mind. So many indications, so many unexplained allusions now plain as a raindrop. How could he not have told her? What else hadn’t he told her?
“Why did she leave?”
Rosalee shrugged. “She was so young. She said she fell in love with yer father, and that was that. She could imagine no other life.”
“Was there a palace?”
“She did not say to me about that. She told me her mother died when she was a little girl.”
Beti nodded. She knew that part.
“If it had not been for that attack, she never would have left ye.”
Grief swelled her heart once more, this time for the lost time with her mother. Beti allowed the memory of that day to play across her closed eyes. Sigrid Boatman had been out by the river washing clothes. Beti had stayed near the house as her mother instructed. Her father sat on a stool outside of their cabin doing something with his hands. They heard a scream. Her father ordered Beti into the house. He ran to Sigrid. Beti waited in the darkened cabin under the bed dreadful fears gripping her heart until her father banged on the door. She opened the door to find him carrying the beloved queen of his heart.
Beti opened her eyes to find Rosalee full of concern.
“Ye should stay with us.”
“What if those men find their way here?”
Rosalee scoffed with all the confidence of true love. “Ben will drive them off. Ye will be safe here.”
Doc Campbell was fifty if he was a day. Of course, he could take care of Rosalee, but he’d be no match for the vile men who came to call on Red. Men who would dig up a dead man to find a mythical treasure. Anger wove through her sorrow and squeezed the air out.
“I think I will check on Silas.”
Rosalee nodded and turned again to her needle.
Nellie came to her side once she stepped onto the porch. Silas and his five ewes munched grass in the pen attached to the Campbell’s small barn. Rain hung heavy in clouds that dipped low enough to touch the treetops.
Someone pounded on the front door. Beti stepped back into the house, Nellie at her heels.
Doc opened the door as usual. Beti slipped into the backroom Rosalee had made into a bedroom for her stay.
“How may I help ye?” Doc’s friendly salute rang down the hall.
Beti’s heart drummed as she waited for the answer. Hopefully it was just a townsperson come for help. Not that she wished anyone to be sick—
“Dr.Campbell?” The voice was rough and thick with an accent not from here. Beti breathed slowly from her mouth so as not to make a sound.
“Yes. What can I do for ye?”
“I be Harry Peebles and this be Kurt Jagger. We come to visit an old friend—”
“We found his grave—folks in town tell us ye cared for him.” A new voice, this one smooth and deep.
“I care for everyone in this town. Who was ye friend?”
“He went by the name Billy Boatman,” the first man spoke again.
Beti retrieved her firelock. She primed the pan. She willed Rosalee to stay in the parlor with all her soul.
“Yes, I cared for him.”
