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  “We shall be all right, I think,” she whispered, grinning up at him wickedly. “Did you eat your eggs?”

  The eggs were surely cold, and Calvin was full from his dinner at the cafeteria, yet she’d gone to all the trouble . . . “Not yet,” he said, knowing he would eat every bite even if his stomach burst.

  “Well then, Mr. Stowe, go on and eat.” She pulled the blankets up to her chin once more. “When you’re finished, come to bed so we might make up properly.”

  Calvin smiled with eager anticipation, leaned down for one more kiss, and then left the room so that he might eat his eggs.

  Chapter Three

  February 29, 1836

  The clock on the mantel of her father’s home chimed four o’clock, pulling Hattie from the story she was trying to finish for that night’s Semi-Colon Club meeting, the literary group she, Calvin, and several members of the Beecher family belonged to. The group was a little piece of New England intellectualism amid the Western Frontier—to socialize with like-minded and educated people was priceless. Hattie finished the sentence she was working on with a sigh. She still needed a summary paragraph, and she wasn’t entirely pleased with the opening line, but in the fortnight since the “Painting Day” argument with Calvin, she’d been trying to do a better job managing the household and had promised herself she would leave her father’s house at four o’clock.

  She’d had dinner ready most evenings, though she still borrowed from her father’s table most of the time, and she tried to keep the house tidy even though it was tedious to pack away everything only to bring it out again the next day. She hoped that by applying herself as Calvin wanted her to—as Eliza had before her, though he hadn’t said as much—she would find the same joy and satisfaction Eliza had. She had found some measure of satisfaction in having Calvin compliment her efforts, but she’d felt no real joy as of yet. Most of what she did day in and day out seemed like a waste of her time.

  Hattie stood, and Catharine looked up from the book she was reading on the other side of the room. “Leaving already?” Catharine had written her piece for the club meeting weeks ago. Hattie had revised it and given some suggestions that her sister had promptly ignored.

  “Calvin returns at five on Mondays.” Did her tone sound bitter? She hoped not.

  Catharine returned to her reading but her silence said enough.

  Hattie bit back a defense and picked up the paper she’d been toiling over all afternoon. The meeting didn’t start until seven thirty; perhaps she would find time after dinner was heated, served, and cleaned up to work on the final few lines. The hope was thin. She let out a sigh, then glanced at Catharine to make sure she hadn’t heard. Catharine did not look up.

  Hattie put her paper inside her leather writing folder while reminding herself that a delightful evening awaited her with Calvin and their friends at the meeting. She’d always enjoyed the Semi-Colon Club, but looked forward to tonight more than usual. Her days had become so tedious of late. Coming to the President’s House—and enjoying the delicious luncheon the cook had prepared—had been a welcome reprieve from the work of the cottage. She fetched her coat from the rack in the hall and wound her scarf around her neck.

  There had been some snow flurries that afternoon, not the heavy soggy kind, and a thin layer of snow preserved her footprints as she crossed Gilbert Street. The cold snapped at any exposed portion of her face, and she was grateful to see the doorway of her home. Calvin found the tiny cottage insulting—he’d been promised a full-sized home upon accepting his position nearly four years ago and was still waiting—but Hattie thought it perfect for just the two of them.

  On the other hand, she wouldn’t mind better furniture whereas Calvin was quite satisfied with the heavy dark pieces that had been included with the house. She’d ordered new rugs against his wishes; they would come next week. She made a mental note to make dinner every night until then in order to earn some favor for when he learned what she’d done. New rugs were not extravagant, no matter what Calvin might think, and she was certain he’d like them once he forgave her the expense.

  Hattie had left a pot of bean soup simmering that morning before she’d gone to her father’s house. She would build up the fire when she got home to heat it through while she made some griddle cakes. She could be proud of her accomplishment in having made a full meal all by herself so long as she didn’t think of all she’d have rather done with the time. She’d have likely finished her story if she hadn’t had to attend to dinner. Keeping a house was an incredibly dull use of her time, but she was a wife now and had responsibilities.

  Hattie stomped her feet on the mat and pushed through the front door, immediately realizing that the warmth which should have greeted her was not there. She took a hesitant step inside. She’d left enough coal in the stove, hadn’t she?

  She took another step inside and noted a hollowness about the house: an opening, a break. When she reached the kitchen, she saw snow, as fine as flour, covering much of the room. The back kitchen door gaped open, and, with a scowl, Hattie trudged forward and shut the door, listening for the click of the latch that she had apparently not listened for that morning when she’d gone out to use the privy. The wind must have pushed the door open as it had a dozen times in the last month. Without anyone to notice it today, however, it had stayed open. For hours.

  Snow dusted the kitchen, thinner in the areas furthest from the door but still covering the table and chairs. The butter was frozen in its bowl on the counter. Hattie walked to the cold stove and took the lid off the soup. A layer of congealed fat covered the surface with bits of stray carrots and beans poking through the filmy crust. Hattie clenched her teeth and returned the lid with a snap. She looked around the kitchen with her hands on her hips. So much time sacrificed for the blasted soup only to have it come to this?

  If Calvin would let her hire help, the room would be repaired in no time—many hands made light work. In fact, if Calvin would let her hire help, none of this would have happened because the servant would have closed the door straightaway and then made roasted potatoes for dinner and an apple pie for dessert. Her mouth watered just thinking about it. How much easier her life might be had she not married such a skinflint.

  Be kind, she told herself, be honorable. She took a breath, elevated her thoughts, and then forced a smile. A little snow in the kitchen was a manageable tragedy if she approached it the right way.

  “Emma, fetch me the broom,” she called out to no one. She lifted her chin as a regal woman might. “Pearl, add some coal to the fire.” Her words echoed back to herself, and she took a gliding step forward, her nose still in the air. “If we all pitch in, we can get this cleaned up in a thrice!” She pulled the broom from the closet and continued her imaginary counsels with her imaginary help. “And, truly, is it so very hard to make sure a door is latched? Is it so much to ask that you earn your pay by being attentive to such things? Indeed it isn’t! I’ve half a mind to fire the lot of you, since it seems I have to do everything myself.” The scenario made her smile, taking the edge off her emotions, and so she continued in her role of the grand lady she would never be.

  “Ruth, are you finished with that chicken pie? You know Mr. Stowe likes his dinner hot, and you do make the most delicious chicken pie.”

  She swept the snow toward the door while instructing her fanciful servants, pretending she lived in a fine house and had no need to know how to run a broom herself. Once she had swept out as much snow as possible, she took a cloth and began wiping down the rest of the kitchen so the melting snow would not puddle and pool on the furniture. She threatened Emma when the insolent girl pouted about her duties, and reminded Ruth that she should be grateful for her position here—her references had not been without concern when she’d applied in the fall.

  “I should like a cake to follow dinner too,” she said as she bent down to rebuild the fire in the kitchen stove. “A cake would go a long way to earning my forgiveness of this horrible oversight, Ruth, and of course you have time to bake it. A cake only takes, what, two hours—three at most. Why, it will be done in time before we go to bed, and I shall give each of you a slice as thanks.”

  She lit the paper, closed the door of the stove, and latched the handle before turning to see Calvin in the kitchen doorway. She jumped and put a hand to her chest. “Calvin,” she said, smiling as her heart began to slow from the surprise and then warm at his being home. He had a way of making the house feel full, and she preferred it when he was with her. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Calvin crossed to the table and put his leather bag on one of the still-damp chairs. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Oh,” Hattie said, laughing at herself and feeling the blush in her cheeks. “No one, or, well, I mean, myself, I suppose. I was—”

  “You call yourself Ruth?”

  Belatedly, Hattie realized that his expression was not jovial. Her own mood wilted, and her defenses rose quickly into place. “I was talking to pretend servants, if you must know.”

  “Pretend servants?”

  Her irritation was fully locked into place. “Yes, pretend servants since we don’t have any actual servants to help me when the wind blows doors open and fills my kitchen with snow. I’ve spent the last hour trying to repair the situation, so I made up a houseful of servants to admonish so that the task would not feel so much like the drudgery it is.”

  She put her hands on her hips, challenging him to say she was a grown woman who should not give into her flippant imaginations. Then she would respond that she was bored, with no outlet for her mind, and in need of some mental stimulation. With a little luck, they would have a row that would leave her feeling justified. Being irritated with her husband would save her from pining after the hours wasted cleaning the kitchen. She would of course eventually feel bad, ask his forgiveness, and perhaps see if she could tempt him to bed early to prove that all was right after all. But first, that argument.

  Calvin stepped further into the kitchen, which showed no sign of either the snow she’d found or the effort she’d put into fixing it. He looked toward the back door and then raised a hand to his head and let out a groan. “You’re making no sense, Hattie, but it’s freezing in here.”

  Hattie still wore her coat, and between it and the warmth of her exertion, she hadn’t noticed the lingering cold. She should have repaired the fire in the parlor and the fire in the stove first thing so the house would have warmed as she’d cleaned. She refused to apologize, however.

  “It is cold because the wind blew the door open. By the time I returned, there was an inch of snow throughout the kitchen, Calvin.” Not really an inch, but was it too much for him to commiserate the accident and praise her for having cleaned it up so well? She’d acted responsibly, which was something he always liked, so why not acknowledge it? Or laugh about it. Her desire for an argument dissipated, and she suddenly felt very tired.

  Calvin let out a breath. “Why were you not here to shut the door?”

  “I went to my father’s house to work on my piece for the club meeting. I’ve found no time at all these last weeks and did not want to arrive unprepared as I did for the last two meetings.” Since her marriage, she had not completed a single piece, which aggravated her to no end. She had worried out loud to Calvin that the responsibility of the household was affecting her ability to write, and he had replied that she should schedule time for her own pursuits in between her responsibilities and then stay to that routine. As though a schedule would solve the problem of having too much tedious work. As though creative writing could be done at a previously determined time. Hattie needed to write, or read, or paint, or embroider when the mood gripped her. Talent could not be organized and catalogued like the books in Calvin’s library.

  Calvin left the kitchen without a word. Hattie followed a few steps behind as he entered the living room and fell into the chair by the cold fireplace. He raised both hands to his head. “I don’t suppose you brought any supper home from your father’s house, have you? I’ve a horrible headache tonight, Hattie. I can barely focus my eyes, but I am famished.”

  Hattie walked further into the room, her sympathies pricked by the miserable slump of his shoulders. “I left a pot of bean soup on the stove, but it went cold. I’ve lit the fire and hope to have it warmed through in time for us to eat before the meeting.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not fit to attend the meeting tonight, my dear.”

  Hattie’s hands flopped to her sides, and her own shoulders slumped. “Not attend? After I worked so hard on this piece?” Which wasn’t finished, she reminded herself, because domestic concerns had, yet again, trumped her individual pursuits. It was maddening!

  “I am unfit for company,” he said, massaging his temples while keeping his eyes closed.

  Hattie lifted her chin. “Well, I am not unfit.”

  Calvin opened his eyes, squinting at her a few moments, a look of disappointed acceptance in his eyes. “Then you should, of course, go without me, Hattie. I’ll serve myself the soup when it is ready. Thank you for having it prepared.” He reached out his hand.

  The gesture seemed affectionate, but was he angry with her for leaving? Still unsure, she crossed the room to take his offering. When her small hand was in his larger one, he lifted it to his lips and kissed her palm. Then, with a sigh, he dropped her hand, closed his eyes, and grimaced as he seemed to collapse into the chair again.

  Hattie watched him a few moments while debating what to do. Club members usually arrived in pairs, and Hattie had never attended a meeting alone. Catharine had been Hattie’s partner in the beginning, and Calvin had been Eliza’s; he did not attend in the months after Eliza’s death until Catharine was unable to attend a meeting and Hattie had asked him to partner her. They were spending a great deal of time together by then, so it was a natural transition.

  Calvin groaned again and raised a hand to his temple, his eyes clenched shut. Headaches beset him from time to time. There was nothing either of them could do but let them pass, right?

  After watching Calvin for another moment, his eyebrows cinched in the middle of his forehead, Hattie decided that she would attend the meeting. Calvin had told her she should, and so he could not fault her for going. She fetched a blanket from her cedar chest and tucked it around Calvin’s shoulders. He thanked her with his eyes still closed. She built up the fire in the parlor, stirred the barely warmed soup, and checked the damper on the stove. While Calvin huddled in the parlor, she went over her story in the kitchen and finished the final paragraph. Were her husband feeling better, she would read it to him for his opinion, but he was out of sorts, and she was trying not to feel guilty for leaving him.

  At seven o’clock, Hattie set a bowl of just-warm soup on the table and kissed Calvin good-bye before running for her father’s carriage that had pulled up in front of the house. Her own stomach rumbled with hunger, but Uncle Samuel’s cook always made the most delicious finger foods for the guests. Far better than bean soup.

  Hattie had not been at the club meeting more than twenty seconds before Aunt Elizabeth asked after Calvin.

  “He is under the weather tonight,” Hattie explained with appropriate wifely sympathy, just as she had when Father and Catharine had asked the same question in the carriage. “He encouraged me to come without him.”

  “Oh, dear,” Aunt Elizabeth said. “I hope it is not serious.” With regular breakouts of cholera in Cincinnati, illness was always of great concern.

  “No, no,” Hattie assured her, taking a sandwich from the tray set upon a small table. “Just a headache.” She took a bite of the sandwich—ham and cranberry—delicious!

  Mrs. Greene had joined them during their exchange, and her eyebrows lifted in response to Hattie’s explanation. “Not one of those headaches that leave him low for days?”

  “No, he did not have it this morning, only when he returned this evening.”

  Mrs. Greene shook her head, her round face pulled with sympathy. “I remember him explaining his terrible headaches to me once. He said it was as though a chisel were impaled into his skull and then hammered on for hours and days.”

  He’d never said as much to Hattie, but then he’d never had a headache in her presence before. Then she remembered a time when they were courting and he’d canceled plans three nights in a row because he said his head was hurting to the extreme. Hattie had sent him a note of condolence, and then accompanied her father on a trip to Hamilton where he proselytized to another minister’s congregation. By the time she’d returned, Calvin was well.

  “It is not so bad as that,” Hattie assured Mrs. Greene, but she was uneasy about what she didn’t truly know. Didn’t many people get headaches?

  More guests arrived, and Hattie found herself only thinking about Calvin when someone would ask after him. Mrs. Greene’s sentiment and concern was repeated by most of the club members. “Remember that time he was down for a full week?” Mr. Allen, another teacher at Lane, said. “I don’t think he ate a thing all that time. His belt could barely keep his trousers up when he came back to work.”

  The others in the circle nodded, though Hattie did not remember it.

  “Thank goodness Eliza was there to tend to him,” Father said with a nod. “She at least got him to take some tea and kept a cold cloth on his head.”

  Mrs. Bingham looked at Hattie. “Did you make sure he had some tea before you left, dear?” She caught herself, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment as she leaned forward to pat Hattie’s knee apologetically. “But of course you did.”

  Hattie nodded to save herself from any censure. She hadn’t even thought to make him tea.

  By the time everyone gathered for the readings, every member of the club had expressed deeper concern over Calvin’s welfare than she had felt. Each of them seemed aware of his history with painful headaches, and several of them shared stories about their own headaches, or friends who had been laid low with similar complaints. Hattie hadn’t hesitated deeming Calvin’s complaint as one more shade of him “cultivating indigo,” which he seemed to take a certain comfort from. She struggled to justify herself against the contrast of the unanimous concern surrounding her like a net.