He told her stories of the sea, stories of his ancestors that were handed down in his family like fairy tales. He showed her how to make knots with her corset strings, and when her hands got tangled up, he laughed at her and showed her again.
Maddie kept thinking about what he’d said about her life having been lonely, and now she could see that it had been. As a child she’d never had time for a friend; her sister had been too busy with her paintings and she and her family had been isolated from other families. There had been Hears Good’s sons, but they came to stay only in the summer and then went to their own people in the winter. Her father and his friends had spent a great deal of time with her—all that Maddie could spare, but it wasn’t the same as having a friend her own age.
They were lying on the soft, damp grass by the edge of the stream, their chained arms outstretched. “I never had a friend when I was a child,” she said.
“Me neither. Just brothers.”
She laughed, but he turned a serious face toward her. “But you still aren’t going to tell me about yourself, are you? Even about this father of yours, who is such a paragon of virtue?”
She wanted to, wanted to very much, but she was afraid that if she told him one thing, she’d never be able to stop, and the next thing she knew, she’d be telling him all about Laurel, and there was no predicting what he’d do then. Would he be so protective of her that he’d forbid her to sing? Forbid her to continue on her tour? Tell her that he’d take care of everything from now on, including her little sister that might be killed in the fracas?
When she said nothing, he turned away from her, his jaw set in a hard line. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’d tell you if I could.”
“If you could trust me, you mean,” he said.
“Would you trust me if the life of someone you loved depended on that trust?”
He turned and looked at her. “Yes,” he said simply.
She looked away from him, knowing that he was telling the truth. She sensed that he’d tell her anything she wanted to know about him or his family. “But then, you’re big enough and strong enough to keep me from doing whatever you don’t want me to do, aren’t you?”
“I am smart enough to think that the woman I love has sense enough to do what’s right,” he snapped.
Maddie didn’t have time to take in what he’d said before he rolled to his feet and pulled her up.
“Get up,” he said angrily. “We need to gather firewood.”
“What…what did you mean by ‘woman you love’?”
“You heard me,” he growled, picking up some damp deadfall and shoving it into her arms.
“I don’t think I did. Maybe you should repeat it. In fact, I’d like a lot of things repeated, like all that about virgins and my left foot.” She was smiling at him, and inside she felt light and joyous.
“You can’t hear when it suits you and yet you remember everything your father has ever told you. I hope I get to meet this man someday. I’ll look down at him and say, ‘Mr. Worth, I—’ ” He broke off and looked at Maddie, his eyes wide.
“Worth?” ’Ring’s eyes widened more, the piece of wood suspended in midair.
“My name?”
When he spoke, there was wonder in his voice. “You said that your mother said, ‘Jeffrey, I want you to go east and get a teacher.’ ”
“Yes. So?” She was acting innocent, but she knew where he was going and it felt good to have her father vindicated.
He looked at her in awe and there was reverence in his voice. “Your father couldn’t be Jefferson Worth, could he? The Jefferson Worth? The man who wrote the journals?”
She smiled at him so sweetly. “Yes, he is.”
’Ring could only look at her. Jefferson Worth was a name of legend, a name like George Washington and Daniel Boone. Traveling with but a few other men, he had explored most of America before it was America. He’d kept journals, made maps. His observations were all that was known about some of the Indian tribes that the white man’s greed and diseases had destroyed. He wrote about the animals and their habits, made sketches of the strange plants that he saw on his journeys, wrote about rock formations and hot springs.
“I read his journals when I was a kid and my little brothers still want to be Jeff
erson Worth. Is he still alive? He must be an old man now.”
“Not too old and very much alive. His journals were published when he was just thirty years old, the year after I was born. My mother was the one who saw that they were published. Had it been up to my father, he would have thrown them in a box somewhere and left them.”
“Imagine that. Jefferson Worth.”
She couldn’t resist getting him back for all the things he’d said about her father. “Broad shoulders. Carries pianos around on his back.”