Lake in the Clouds Read Online Free PDF

her audience and how best to keep their interest. She began with the smaller things: Anna Hauptmann was now set to marry the widower McGarrity on the following Sunday afternoon; McGarrity, who had been voted constable when Judge Middleton died, had arrested Peter Dubonnet for taking a buck out of season, a fact that couldn’t be disputed as Dubonnet had hung the meat to ripen in sight of God and man; Goody Cunningham had come to church in an old ozanbrig shift more suited to fieldwork than Sunday worship; Jock Hindle had got drunk on schnapps and spent the night sleeping on the tavern floor, where he was still. This was a great deal of news for so small a village, but the widow still had not had enough. Her needle jabbed impatiently.
    “And Kitty Todd?”
    Jemima took a deep breath and recited the details: a long labor, the names of the women who had attended her, the point at which the doctor’s man had been sent to Johnstown to fetch his master home from his business there—
    “I suppose they sent the Abomination, that Bump.”
    Jemima acknowledged that the doctor’s laboratory assistant had been sent on the errand. The widow was both horrified and fascinated by Cornelius Bump’s physical deformities, but for once she let that topic rest as Jemima continued on withher story: a child normal in form but too small to live, a distraught mother, and the speculations on how her husband would take the news of another stillbirth. There were no confessions or revelations to offer, no drunkenness or heresy; Jemima did a bit of embroidery of her own.
    “Kitty won’t last much longer, they say.” She served this conclusion in a whisper, and saw that she had gone too far: the widow’s head came up slowly.
    “Are you presuming to know the will of the Lord?”
    From his corner, Isaiah sighed his concern for her immortal soul while Jemima assured his mother that she presumed no such thing.
    The widow’s gaze settled on the view while she considered. Jemima saw the line of her back straighten suddenly, the small thin face with its pointed nose and chin fixing on something in the distance. Like a good hunting dog, Jemima thought, and put that thought out of her head before the widow could have a chance to read it from her expression.
    “And what of that stranger?” said the widow, stretching out an arm to point, her finger trembling slightly.
    Isaiah stood abruptly and moved to the window, close enough to Jemima for her to smell him: dry and slightly dusty, as if he lived on a shelf next to his mother’s china figurines of shepherds and milkmaids. She forced herself to look out the window.
    A man stood on the bridge looking up toward Hidden Wolf. Tall and well built, dark red hair tied in a queue, dressed like any hunter: buckskin leggings and overshirt, moccasins. There was a rifle in a sling across his back, a sheathed knife at his side, and a tomahawk tucked into a wide leather belt at his spine. At first glance nothing more than another trapper coming out of the bush. At this time of year sometimes as many as two a day showed up in Paradise, looking for a warm meal. They rarely stayed more than a night and left little more behind than the few coins they spent on beer or Axel’s schnapps. Jemima was about to say just that when the man turned.
    “My God.”
    The widow leaned forward. “Do you know that man?”
    For once Jemima was less concerned with Lucy Kuick’s curiosity than her own. She studied the stranger as closely as the distance would allow, her heart beating so fast that she put ahand there to still it. When he had called his dogs and walked off into the village, she took a sharp breath and let it go.
    The widow leaned forward and pinched Jemima’s forearm so that she jumped. “I asked you a question.”
    “Liam Kirby,” she said. “I hardly recognized him at first.”
    “Liam Kirby?” Patches of color had appeared on the widow’s fallen cheeks. “I know of no Liam Kirby. A relation to