Love's Pursuit by Siri Mitchell Read Free Book Online

soul that rendered the space around me void of my presence. I knew how to breathe so softly that I stirred not even the air in front of my face. And I knew how to sing so that none could discern my voice from the chorus of all the others. But still, in the meetinghouse I became a woman, joined to the other women in the town, even though I did not know how to be one.
    How did one leave aside their memories to sit without shame in the house of God? How did one accept the look of another not as a challenge, not as a warning of danger, but as a simple passing glance . . . as nothing at all? How did one become an unquestioned part of something so great, so wonderful, as this community of souls?
    The questions were not ones that I could answer. They were the product of my overabundant curiosity, for I did not aspire to something so grand. I was unworthy. More than any of them knew. But I wondered just the same. And I observed.
    So much could be learned by watching.
    And far better to watch than to be watched.
    I listened to the lesson. I would not be so proud, so bold, as to think that it did not apply to me. But in the listening, with my head bent slightly in a posture of penitence, I could see. Well enough to know that Goody Blake was going blind, though no one knew it yet but me. It had to do with the way she cast her hands out before her as she walked and sat. I did not know how she could bear the knowledge of it. I doubt if she had gained forty years, and she had a little one still tugging at her skirts.
    Goody Metcalf would have one soon. It did not show yet in anything but her smile and the way she slipped her hands beneath her apron to stroke her belly. It was her first. She would be allowed such indulgences.
    The Hillbrooks were doing poorly. Their crops must have failed last year, though I had not heard it. Their property lay down toward the common at the farthest end of the town’s holdings. And now, with Indian troubles, they would not want to linger long during the summer’s harvest . . . if indeed they were allowed to go there at all. But they were wise. They had read the signs and planned for the worst. I could tell it by the way Goody Hillbrook had turned her cuffs inside out instead of replacing them with new ones. By the way she had resewn her skirts so their frayed seams would not show.
    The Phillips. . . now there was a picture of prosperity. There was always work for a carpenter when a town was being established. And a good thing, for his daughters would soon be marrying. Did they realize Mary Phillips’s gaze wandered toward Simeon Wright . . . even as her sister Susannah’s steadfastly avoided him?
    I wondered about that. Perhaps, then, she had some inkling of his character.
    As I sat there listening and wondering, Susannah’s gaze shot now and then toward John Prescotte. But not as often as one might think for a young woman all but pledged to be married. And not in the dreamy, thoughtless way of those mooning over their beloved. Nay, if anyone could be said to capture her full attention, it was Captain Holcombe, who marched round the meetinghouse with the precision of a beating drum. ’Twas to him that her eyes seemed unaccountably fixed.
    Curious, that. Because Susannah was good. And kind and meek. Not like some who wore their religion as a cloak to be drawn on or cast off at will. Not like her sister. Neither like her friend, Abigail Clarke.
    Those two were cut of the same cloth. Abigail had sat two years before, numbered among her parents’ children, watching Simeon Wright in much the same way Mary did now. But Simeon Wright had never, not once, returned the interest.
    Nay, his attention was directed to two women in particular. To his mother and to Susannah Phillips, though only one of them was aware of it. And it was not a benign or casual interest.
    I am sure that to ask Mary and her friends of Simeon Wright would encourage coy twitters. He was a handsome man and gave off the appearance of being