Fitcher's Brides Read Online Free PDF

some running to keep ahead of civilization, others intending to drag civilization into the wilderness. Still others had been swept up in one or more of the religious frenzies that had burned across New York State, one upon the other, for over half a century—one of which had dislocated the lives of the Charter sisters.
    The two girls meandered across the deck, past bales of cotton and wool, and trunks and bags toted by servants, and families gathered around their belongings, and even at one point three men kneeling in an open passage and playing at dice. Amy averted her eyes but Kate watched shamelessly until she was pulled away. “It’s not ladylike to stare that way,” Amy instructed.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œJust wait till I tell Vern.”
    By then they had spotted their elder sister. She stood beside their father and stepmother just ahead, at the rail. Mr. Charter stared out across the lake at the crisp blue sky.
    Vern saw her sisters and called out, “I swear I cannot turn my back a moment. If you two should ever get lost, what would I do?”
    Lavinia, their stepmother, pushed forward like some black-garbed ghoul, blocked Vern with her body, and spoke over the girl’s words: “Young ladies do not mill about! How is it that from dockside to ship you could not keep up with your own kin ?”
    Vern stared daggers at the back of Lavinia’s head but said nothing, leaving it to Amy to account for herself; but the middle sister had never been able to express what she felt to her stepmother, and barely to her older sister, who had acted as mother to the two younger girls for most of the past six years.
    In the silence into which no one could insert a response, their father turned finally from the rail. His heavy-lidded eyes expressed a rooted weariness until his gaze settled upon his three girls, and then his face composed a smile, though the eyes somehow did not participate—eyes that had borne such iniquities, such calamities, as the girls had no appreciation for.
    Mr. Charter had lost his savings in the financial panic of ’37, and it was Lavinia’s money which now, six years later, kept the family afloat. Lavinia was paying for their relocation to Jekyll’s Glen from Boston. Lavinia had secured Mr. Charter’s new position. When the girls married, it would be up to Lavinia to provide them with a dowry. They didn’t believe she ever would, just as they had come to accept, in traveling here, that they were probably never going to marry. Nevertheless, the girls maintained a polite if chilly truce with this stepmother none of them had ever desired.
    If Lavinia had made their father happy, they might have rejoiced, or at least accepted her. Instead, she had stolen him from them as surely as if she’d replaced him with a changeling. It was Lavinia who had led Mr. Charter to the tent of Elias Fitcher, where his brain began to burn with the twin lights of judgment and salvation. It was she who had brought the end of the world into their house. And it was she who, by manipulating their father, now brought their household to the end of the world.
    Â 
    The three girls leaned on the rail and watched the blue waters of the lake slide swiftly by. The shoreline moved slower at a distance. The smell of pine rode the blustery wind across Seneca Lake from the trees that hemmed it in all around. The hills above had been cleared for farming, and even now tiny figures were visible there, though the ground couldn’t be much past spring thaw.
    Beneath their feet the deck thrummed with the chugging engine, vibrating up their legs. Behind them various people strolled the boards, and snippets of conversations flitted by.
    â€œA sick philosopher is incurable—”
    â€œI hear’ed news of a gold strike a’way out west in Ohio.”
    â€œAnd will you be goin’ there yourself?”
    â€œHe is among us even now, I tell you. Cast about