As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann Read Free Book Online Page A

wondered would she notice the sweat which had begun squeezing from my hand.
    'Folk naturally defend their own,' Caro went on. 'Or a servant who kills a trespasser by chance, shall he be blamed?'
    My guts coiled within me for I thought I saw a way out of my gaol. 'So,' I put it to her, 'if it were one of us dispatched Chris, would you deem him guilty?'
    ‘ ’ Twould depend why he did it.' She straightened suddenly. 'Why Jacob, do you suppose it is one of us?'
    I hesitated.
    'Yes! You have a man in mind,' she insisted.
    'For myself, none. But we are servants, we must look to be suspected.'
    Caro seemed satisfied with this. However, in speaking it, I had slammed the door of the gaol on myself, and now felt my courage begin to slip away.
    'I saw you from the window,' Caro went on, 'dragging the pond. I had made up my mind for Patience.'
    'Well, you knew what cause she had to despair,' I said. 'Her condition.'
    Caro's hand stiffened in mine but she said nothing.
    'I am not Godfrey, that things should be kept from me,' I said.
    'Zeb asked me not to.'
    There was a thunderbolt! I had thought to receive some such an swer as, I did but yesterday find out, or I do not like such talk. My love, the woman I had near entrusted with my secret, with my very life, was all the while in private conference with my own brother.
    I put Caro away from me and searched her face. 'Zeb told you—'
    'Asked.' She looked back frankly, without shame.
    'But why should I not know? He is my brother. I am the child's uncle!' I went on, growing more angry as the full sense of it came to me. Why, he had gone so far as to mock me for my ignorance.
    'He said he must tell you himself,' she said quietly. 'Do you not think that was right, Jacob?'
    'Aye! Would that he had told me before he told you!' I got up and retrieved my hat. Then, not wanting to sit down again, I put it on and stayed behind the bench, away from her.
    'It was Patience first broke it to me, not Zeb,' protested Caro. She twisted round to speak to me; there was a flush beginning in her cheeks.
    'I do not think he would ever have told me,' I brooded. 'Had we pulled her out of the pond, how happy he would be!'
    'No, Jacob! How can you say such things of him?'
    'Well, does he look miserable? Does he weep, is he unable to eat?'
    'Not while you are there. But I have seen him weep.'
    'Frightened he'd be made to marry her, most like.' I circled the bench. 'And had I known it, he would have been.'
    'Well, you know now,' Caro said. Her eyes were dry and not as soft as I had seen them when we came into the maze.
    'He has angered me. And so have you.'
    'You are too easily angered.' She sat very straight with her fingers intertwined on her lap. "That is why you are not told things.'
    I was amazed. 'Is this how you speak to your future husband? So you have let Zeb give an account of my character!'
    'No indeed. I have eyes and ears of my own.' Caro stood up and arranged the top of her gown. 'It may be he would not marry her, but to say he wishes her dead! You are too fierce with your brother.'
    'Was it not you, yourself, told me of her filthy braggings? Said it sickened you? Would a man want to marry that?’ I grimaced in disgust.
    'Such women do marry. What would you have him do?' She replaced her cap. 'But you are troubled, it is natural with Chris's death. Surely that's more terrible than—'
    'What has Chris to do with this?'
    'Jacob! Zebedee has lost both friend and love. Have some pity.' Caro turned and walked through the first gap in the maze.
    'He plays on the pity of silly maids and then he ruins them,' I shouted after her.
    It is a woman of all people who should see the danger in such a fellow, and a woman who never will. I sat arguing it out with her though she could no longer hear me. She was as obstinate as Izzy, who was forever telling me that Zeb was not really bad, for all the world as if he too were a wench dazzled by Zeb's eyes.
    They were both of them deluded. He would never be anything but