Read Online Lake in the Clouds by Sara Donati - Free Book Online

boy looked up slowly from his plate, and then he nodded.
    A firm knock at the door startled Elizabeth. She rose so quickly from her chair that it would have tipped over if Nathaniel had not caught it.
    “It’s just Curiosity,” said Hannah, looking out the window. “And Galileo and Joshua with her. Thank goodness.”
    Curiosity was so anxious to see the newcomer that she hardly paused to greet Elizabeth on her way to the sickbed the men had set up in the long workroom that ran along the back of the house. Hannah went with her, and Elizabeth busied herself with clearing away the meal. The men sat down to whatever work they had to hand, all except Joshua, who paced the room while he chewed on the stem of his pipe. Elizabeth liked Joshua, who had a dry wit and a surprising way with words, although he did not often choose to speak. Now she tried tocalm him by asking questions about Daisy and the children, which he answered politely but as briefly as he could without being rude. He would not be distracted, nor would he provide distraction; Elizabeth concentrated instead on getting the children to their beds in the sleeping loft.
    Finally she stood again in the common room, looking at the book that lay open on her desk. Tomorrow she must teach; there were lessons to prepare. But it would be very hard to concentrate until this business with Selah Voyager had been resolved, and so she took up her knitting instead.
    “Hard at work, I see,” said Galileo with his shy smile.
    Elizabeth held up her half-finished stocking for his examination. Not beautiful, certainly, but she was proud of it nonetheless. Learning to knit had been one of the most difficult tasks of her life, but she had come to take comfort in the steadiness of the work.
    In her childhood home young ladies knew nothing, cared to know nothing, of spinning or weaving or knitting. Aunt Merriweather discouraged even fine embroidery in the fear that it would lead to the need for spectacles, which she believed must necessarily have a detrimental effect on the interest of eligible young men. At Oakmere, Mantua silk and India muslin, embroidered lawns and satin brocades were ordered by the bolt and turned over to the seamstresses.
    But now Elizabeth lived between two worlds, both different from Oakmere, and from each other: the other women at Lake in the Clouds spent much of their time curing deer and buckskin into leather soft and supple enough to make overblouses, hunting shirts, breechclouts, and leggings; down in the village flax was grown and harvested, spun and woven into linen in a laborious process that seemed to never end. In Many-Doves’ world, a girl’s reputation was built in part by the quality of her doeskin and the beadwork on her moccasins; in Paradise a young woman who could warp a loom was well regarded. Elizabeth stood empty-handed in both worlds.
    Marriage had come suddenly, long after she had made peace with spinsterhood. Her cousins had gone to housekeeping with trunks of linens, silver, and china; Elizabeth had come with a good command of Latin, French, German, and the ancient and modern philosophies, a familiarity with literature from Euripides to Pope, a solid grasp of mathematics, butwithout a spoon to her name, or a single practical skill. This lack was addressed to some degree by money she could call her own—the interest on her small inheritance from her mother, and that part of her portion of her father’s estate that hadn’t gone to creditors. Money bought fabric and yarn, buttons and thread and ribbon. But there were no seamstresses in Paradise.
    Once a year she went to Johnstown to buy what could not be purchased in the village and in return for teaching their children, the women turned that raw material into clothing and household linens. And still Elizabeth had not been comfortable with this arrangement until she learned to knit, taking her lessons from Anna Hauptmann at the trading post for a full month before she turned out her first