“Fetch Alice. I know she’s in there.”

“And how would you know that?”

“This has gone far enough. You bring her out and we’ll say no more about it.”

Margery stared at her boot, considering this. “I don’t think so, Mr. Van Cleve. Good morning.”

She turned to walk back in and his voice lifted. “What? Wait, you don’t shut a door on me!”

Margery turned slowly until she was facing him. “And you don’t beat up on a girl who answers you back. Not a second time.”

“Alice did a foolish thing yesterday. I admit tempers were running high. She needs to come on home now so we can sort things out. In the family.” He ran a hand over his face and his voice softened. “Be reasonable, Miss O’Hare. Alice is married. She can’t stay here with you.”

“The way I see it, she can do what she likes, Mr. Van Cleve. She’s a grown woman. Not a dog, or a . . . a doll.”

His eyes hardened.

“I’ll ask her what she wants to do when she wakes. Now I have work to get to. So I’d be obliged if you’d leave me to wash up my breakfast dishes. Thank you.”

He stared at her for a moment, his voice lowering. “You think you’re mighty clever, don’t you, girl? You think I don’t know what you did with them letters over at North Ridge? You think I don’t know about your filthy books and your immoral girls trying to steer good women into the path of sin?”

For a few seconds the air seemed to disappear around them. Even the dog fell quiet.

His voice, when he spoke again, was thick with menace. “You watch your back, Margery O’Hare.”

“You have a nice day now, Mr. Van Cleve.”

Margery turned and walked back inside the cabin. Her voice was calm and her gait steady, but she stopped by the curtain and watched from the side of the window until she was sure Van Cleve had disappeared.

 

* * *

 

• • •

Where the heck is Little Women? I swear I’ve been searching for that book for ages. Last time I saw it checked out was for old Peg down at the store, but she says she returned it and it’s been signed off in the book.”

Izzy was scanning the shelves, her finger tracing the spines of the books as she shook her head in frustration. “Albert, Alder, Allemagne . . . Did somebody steal it?”

“Maybe it got ripped and Sophia’s fixing it.”

“I asked. She says she ain’t seen it. It’s bugging me because I got two families asking and nobody seems to know where it’s gone. And you know how ornery Sophia gets when books go missing.” She adjusted her stick under her arm and moved to her right, peering closely at the titles.

The voices quieted as Margery walked through the back door, closely followed by Alice.

“You got Little Women tucked away in your bag somewhere, Margery? Izzy’s bitching fit to bust and—whoo-hoo. Looks like someone took a beating.”

“Fell off her horse,” said Margery, in a tone of voice that brooked no discussion. Beth stared at Alice’s swollen face, then her gaze slid to Izzy, who looked down at her feet.

There was a brief silence.

“Hope you—uh—didn’t hurt yourself too bad, Alice,” said Izzy, quietly.

“Is she wearing your breeches?” said Beth.

“You think I’ve got the only pair of leather breeches in the state of Kentucky, Beth Pinker? I’ve never known you so fixated on someone’s appearance before. Anyone would think you’d got nothing better to do.” Margery walked up to the ledger on the desk and began to flick through it.

Beth took the rebuke cheerfully. “Reckon they look better on her than you anyway. Lord, it’s colder than a well-digger’s backside out there. Anyone seen my gloves?”

Margery scanned the pages. “Now, Alice is a little sore so, Beth, you take the two routes over at Blue Stone Creek. Miss Eleanor is staying with her sister so she won’t need new books this time round. And, Izzy, if you could take the MacArthurs? Would that work? You can cut across that forty-acre field to tie in with your usual routes. The one with the falling-down barn.”

They agreed without complaint, sneaking glances at Alice, who said nothing, her attention fixed on some unidentified point three feet from her toes, her cheeks burning. As Izzy left she put out her hand and squeezed Alice’s shoulder gently. Alice waited until they had packed their bags and mounted their horses, and then she sat, gingerly, on Sophia’s chair.

“You all right?”

Alice nodded. They sat and listened to the sound of hoofs fading up the road.

“You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?” Margery said finally. “Ain’t the hurt. It’s that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it don’t matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them, period. It’s when you realize they can always just shut you up with a fist. Just like that.”

Alice remembered how Margery’s demeanor had changed when the man in the bar had placed himself between them, how her gaze had landed hard where the man touched Alice’s shoulder.

Margery pulled the coffee pot from its stand and cursed as she discovered it was empty. She mulled over it for a moment, then straightened up, and flashed Alice a tight smile. “Course, you know that only happens till you learn to hit back harder.”

 

* * *

 

• • •

Despite the daylight hours being now so short, the day ran lengthy and strange, the little library filled with a vague sense of suspense, as if Alice were not quite sure whether she should be waiting for someone or for something to happen. The blows hadn’t hurt too much the night before. Now she grasped that was her body’s reaction to shock. As the hours crept by, various parts of her had begun to swell and stiffen, a dull throb pushing at the parts of her head where it had made contact with Van Cleve’s meaty fist or the unforgiving table-top.

Margery left, after Alice assured her that, yes, she was fine, and, no, she didn’t want any more people missing out on their books, promising to bolt the door all the time she was gone. In truth, she needed time alone, time where she didn’t have to worry about everybody else’s reactions to her, as well as everything else.

And so, for a couple of hours, it was just Alice in the library, alone with her thoughts. Her head ached too much to read, and she didn’t know what to look at anyway. Her thoughts were muddied, tangled. She found it hard to focus, while the questions of her future—where she would live, what to do, whether even to try to return to England—seemed so huge and intractable that eventually it seemed easier simply to concentrate on the small tasks. Tidy some books. Make some coffee. Step outside to use the outhouse, then return swiftly to bolt the door again.