Chapter 19

C HAPTER 19

What are men to rocks and mountains?

—Jane Austen

The warmth of understanding lightened Marigold's chest. "Naturally." But as warm as her feelings were, her thoughts were decidedly scattered, especially when a bright-eyed young gentleman approached them.

"May I introduce you to my cousin, Mr. Thaddeus Endicott?" Cab asked as he gestured to the stylishly dressed young man. "My dear friend Miss Marigold Manners."

Marigold was delighted to find Cab had any relatives who weren't dyed-in-the-wool old puritans. "How do you do, Mr. Endicott."

The young man stuck out his hand, all enthusiastic equanimity. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Manners. Call me Tad."

The name sent a frisson of heady excitement—much like she imagined her father had felt when he gambled—running up Marigold's spine. If there had been only one Minnie, there ought to be only one Tad—or Taddy—Daisy's intended beau.

"I will, thank you, Tad. And you must call me Marigold." She took his hand with pleasure, for as well as being every bit as handsome as Daisy had claimed, the young man had a breezy kindness about him.

It seemed to run in the family.

But Marigold needed to dismiss her ridiculously complicated feelings about Cab Cox and concentrate on making the most of this introduction. "I believe we may have a friend in common in my dear cousin Miss Daisy Hatchet."

"Oh, Daisy." Tad Endicott's eyes widened, and his cheeks gained encouraging warmth. "Why, she's just the swellest girl."

"Yes she is," Marigold agreed. "Just lovely. And very beautiful."

"Pretty as a daisy," the young man answered with some alacrity. "That's what I tell her."

"I'm sure you say that to all the girls," Marigold demurred, probing a new theory about Daisy's potential jealousy of Minnie. "A handsome young man like you must have any number of sweethearts along the North Shore."

"No, ma'am." Tad's face turned ruddier. "Only the one." He turned to his cousin and added, "But don't tell my father I said so."

"Not a word," was Cab's loyal answer.

"Your secret is safe with us," Marigold added with what she hoped was an encouraging smile, because her clever, determined, relieved brain was already making all sorts of interesting adjustments and addenda to her proposed plan for Daisy's education.

Tad smiled and ducked his head and swiped the back of his hand across his red-tinged cheekbones and tipped the brim of his hat up all at the same time—the very picture of the sweetly fumbling beau.

Oh, yes, if Daisy truly wanted him, Marigold could fashion her specifically for just such an open, engaging, well-connected, conveniently rich young man.

"Well, I best get on. Miss Manners, it's been a pleasure." Tad touched his hat politely and said to Cab, "Be seeing you."

"Be seeing you," Cab responded, before his handsome young cousin loped off, much like an exuberant but purebred puppy, all long, gangly legs and swinging arms.

"Now." Cab turned the bright beam of his gaze wholly upon Marigold. "How are you getting on out there on Great Misery, Marigold? I've heard some things …"

"What things?" Marigold was eager to hear exactly what the more prosperous people of the town thought of the Hatchets, so she might more effectively counteract such perceptions. A good cleanup could work wonders, but something more serious would require a different approach—or a hasty retreat. "I assure you, I am quite well. In fact, I've never been better."

"I can see that," Cab affirmed with a fond look.

Marigold deflected her blush. "Thank you. Are you also staying with your relatives, these Endicotts?"

"For the time being." A frown knotted up his perfect brow. "Got a nice little place along the water just south of here, George Endicott has."

Only a man of Cab's pedigree could call what was assuredly a summer estate a "nice little place." But she noted he said his uncle's name carefully, as if testing what she knew of the man.

"I take it he is the George Endicott of the Salem Endicotts? And the Massachusetts Supreme Court?"

Cab gave her that self-deprecating half smile. "Just so. He seems to fancy himself something of a local grandee."

Marigold could only smile back. "I expect he might, if he owns a large piece of the coastline."

"But not all of it." Cab doffed his hat and flipped it around in his hand. "That's why he brought me out here—to take a look at a lawsuit regarding some land that used to be his—or his family's."

"So, you're to litigate for your supper? I wish you luck." Marigold felt a bit sorry for whomever Cab had in his sights. His brand of well-bred intelligence seemed to come with a large share of well-camouflaged, steely determination—that trick he had for never letting on.

"Do you?" He looked at her askance. "You haven't heard anything about a dispute with Endicott?"

"No, but I am new to the area and not yet privy to much local gossip." A new thought came to her. "Is it to do with the Hatchets?"

"Well, on the face of it, it's an old dispute, started before either you or I were born." He looked serious again, as if there were more he wanted to say. "But when he wrote me with the particulars, I knew I had to come. I couldn't take the chance—"

"Is this stranger is bothering you?" It was Wilbert, looking far more dog in the manger than Marigold could ever have imagined.

"Wilbert, no, he is not bothering me. Please let me introduce you to an old … friend"—her tongue stumbled only slightly at the word—"of mine, Mr. Jonathan Cabot Cox. Cab, this is my cousin, Mr. Wilbert Hatchet."

Cab immediately put his hand out, disarming Wilbert with his natural, hail-fellow-well-met friendliness. "An honor to meet you, Mr. Hatchet. And thank you for taking such good care of Marigold. It's a boon to her friends to know she's being so well looked after."

"Looking after us, mostly," Wilbert stammered. "But any friend of Cousin Marigold's is a friend of mine. She's a wonder, she is, helping out round the place. Don't know how we ever got along before her."

"Indeed?" Cab chuckled and shook Wilbert's hand in agreement. "That sounds just like her."

"There!" Marigold beamed at Wilbert as if to say, See how easy it is to make friends in town? But she thought it best to end the conversation before her cousin's store of social equanimity was exhausted. "Well." She extended her gloved hand for Cab to shake. "It's been lovely to see you, Cab."

He covered her hand with his own. "I hope to see you again, soon. Oh, I forgot—I have something of yours in my possession. I picked up some crates with your name when I arrived at the depot."

"My bicycle? How wonderful! Since it appears you are in possession of my prized possession, I do hope to see you sooner rather than later." Marigold's mind began to tick like a well-machined clock. "Might I trouble you to deliver it to me on Great Misery?"

"Sure, but …" Cab hesitated.

"How about tomorrow?" Marigold was anxious to get her machine—and her independence—back. And she could use Cab's visit to Daisy's advantage. "Bring your cousin, if you can."

Some of the eager warmth went out of Cab's face. "Tad?"

"Yes. I should very much like to introduce your young cousin to my two young cousins, Seviah and the aforementioned Daisy." She paused and attempted to give Cab a subtle sort of look that Wilbert might not understand. "It is so very hard for young people to meet one another, I'm sure you'll agree, when both live so far away from the town."

Cab's barely perceptible tension eased. "Up to your old tricks, are you, Marigold, arranging dates for everyone but yourself?"

Marigold refused to be baited. "Your cousin, being a local, will be able to direct you across the sound to the island."

"I suppose he will." Cab was too polite to contradict her. "Well then, I'll suppose we'll come tomorrow. But I need to tell you—"

"Excellent." Marigold stopped him from expressing any more personal thoughts. "Until tomorrow." She saw Cab off with a cheery wave, determined to dismiss the surprising tumult of emotions his appearance had engendered, but as soon as they were alone, Wilbert brought Cab up again.

"You know that fellow pretty well, then?" he asked.

"We were acquainted in Boston." Marigold gave him the simplest explanation. There was no reason to bring up the complicated hierarchy of Boston society and its relationship to collegiate social interactions.

"He courting you?"

"No," Marigold said firmly. Though she knew next to nothing of Cab's intentions—besides his ambiguous "interesting possibilities"—she knew her own convictions. "I am not, at present, interested in being courted with a view toward marriage. Now, let me relate some of the far more important information I learned at the library. The accepted ratio for keeping sheep is ten ewes and fifteen lambs per acre of good forage or pasture. How many acres is Great Misery?"

"Don't know really—ain't never seen the deed. But Pa's always said somewheres over a hundred acres."

"That big?" Marigold realized she had seen but very little of the property. "That's encouraging—there must be some suitable forage amongst so many acres?"

"Dunno. It's woods, salt grass, and rock. Not good for much."

"Well, the agricultural sources I consulted said that thirty acres, properly improved and fertilized, should sustain one hundred ewes and one hundred fifty lambs, but that the flock needs to be rotated, or moved within the property, to keep from overgrazing. And you need to have vegetation called forbs , which I had to look up, which is plant fodder with leaves."

"Huh." He made a thoughtful noise. "Leaves, not spears like grass? So, like the scrub or the understory of the woods?"

"There! You see, you have a vast deal of understanding, Wilbert, even if it wasn't learned in school or books."

"You reckon?"

"I do. But what's more interesting is that in the latest farm gazettes I consulted, many of the top agriculturalists are actually recommending restocking with sheep instead of cows or cattle after last year's bank panic forced so many farms out of business."

"Reckon that makes sense," he said slowly. "Things was never good, but a few years ago's when they turned particular bad—had to sell off the last of the bullocks. That's when the old man got stranger than ever. He was always a preachy sort, but the hellfire and brimstone came on him harder than ever."

"I am sorry. The past year has been hard on all of us. No one—not even my seemingly easy-living friend there, Cab Cox—escaped unscathed. The financial crisis cost him his father, dead from an attack of apoplexy at trying to prevent a particularly distressing loss."

"Wish my old man would drop dead of an apoplexy so's the rest of us might get on without any more distressing loss."

Marigold was not so much shocked by the sentiment as by Wilbert's honestly in expressing himself. "I'm sure you don't mean that, but I do understand your frustration," she consoled him. "The articles I read indicated that keeping sheep is being encouraged to improve range soil and vegetation by"—she consulted her notes—" improving forage densities by reducing noxious plants and improving habitat conditions for beneficial wildlife ."

Wilbert nodded along. "One of them fellas at the Grange was saying as he reckoned goats would even eat poison ivy for winter forage …" He trailed off as if still not convinced. "Don't know that might also be true of sheep. But wouldn't that make a change to get rid of some poison on Great Misery!"

Marigold could see that Wilbert was making a joke, so she stuck to the safer topic at hand. "I did read a news account about cattlemen setting themselves against sheep keepers." She felt it only right to admit to the bad as well as the good. "But most of those conflicts are over the rights to public grazing lands out west. And you own Great Misery, don't you?"

"Pa does, I reckon. And Little Misery too, though I can't remember the last time any one of us went there."

"Then it seems to me you've got enough acreage that actually belongs to you, so no one should have any objection."

"No one but Pa." But Wilbert looked as if he were beginning to actually consider it. "I reckon people don't much care what we do, so long as we keep to ourselves and it don't interfere with nothing onshore."

"There you have it." Marigold had formed her opinion, but she could see from the deep frown on Wilbert's face that he was not yet convinced. "I am happy to do more research, if you require it."

"At that library?" he asked.

"Indeed. You should come with me next time."

"Don't know as I could," he hedged. "Don't reckon I have enough learning."

Marigold saw her next opening. "Should you like to try to learn more? I can teach you," she offered. "I just happen to have the necessary books. We can start this evening."

"You won't tell no one?"

"Not a soul," Marigold swore. "You have my word. It will be our secret."

With so many secrets floating about Great Misery Island, what was one more?