A Mischief in the Snow - By Margaret Miles Page 0,20

snarls and harsh whispers.

“Not if you know what's good for you, you won't, Godwin!” Lem said to the fat boy.

“And if I do?” came a quick answer. “You'll beat me, I suppose?” It was said with a sneer. Alex rightly imagined he had little reason, at the moment, to fear a blatant attack.

“See if I don't!” Lem growled, his voice betraying rising fury.

“Then you are both going to be sorry.” Alex took a step forward, his hands clenched into threatening fists. “Give me any more trouble, and I'll gladly tell the whole world that you—”

He had no chance to finish, for Lem gave him a shove that knocked the wind from his body.

In a few moments more they circled one another. Then they came together in what might have seemed, from a distance, to be a clasp of friendship. Yet Charlotte could see sharp blows were being delivered, as first one and then the other took a turn. Both tried to hide what they were up to, but it was no good—Sarah Proctor and Jemima Hurd turned shocked faces.

Martha Sloan hurried forward, her cardinal cloak flying, her displeasure apparent. Fearing what might come next, Charlotte interrupted the young men herself.

“Good day, Mr. Godwin!” she called out loudly. They stopped, exchanged a few more words in threatening undertones, and took several steps apart. Lem stooped to retrieve his hair ribbon, while Alex turned to pant and glower.

“I've been hoping we'd find a chance to speak,” Charlotte said more gently.

“Then I'm sorry, madam! For I am off to write something down, as I should have done before.”

Why, she asked herself, did she suddenly think the same? Wasn't there something she, too, had meant to write down, and remember?

“Could we talk later?” she asked. “When you have a moment to spare? You'll return this afternoon?”

“I most certainly will,” Godwin assured her with a fresh sneer. “And then, I will have something for Mr. Longfellow! Good day to you, madam,” he said, touching his hat to her, giving no sign to Lem or to Martha Sloan as he stalked away.

Mattie stood at Lem's shoulder, her pale blue eyes snapping, though she somehow managed to hold her tongue.

“I see,” said Charlotte, breaking the charged silence, “that you've given Henry his chance on the ice—and this year, he's learned to stop himself before charging into others. An accomplishment to be proud of.”

“Agreed,” Lem answered, addressing her thoughts rather than her exact words. “Yet sometimes, a man has no choice.”

“Lem Wainwright,” Martha exploded, “what could be lost in one turn with him, out on the ice?” He looked at her in some confusion.

“Nothing, I suppose,” he finally answered. “Was it what you wanted, Mattie?”

“No—but just how should I have refused? You'd already gone off to prove you skate better than I do. Didn't you? Didn't you?”

“What if I did?”

The girl turned her face to the sky, her lips pressed tightly together.

“Well,” said Lem at last, “there's nothing to be done about any of it now, I suppose. And all that skating has made me hungry.”

“Go on, then, and try my suet cakes. My sisters may say I made them for you, but we all know how fond of them my father is.”

Imagining they must have further words meant only for one another, Charlotte turned away to examine ideas of her own. The exchange she'd heard earlier had been a curious one; she wondered just what Alex Godwin had suggested. She also asked herself if Lem would one day come to real blows with his apparent rival, or with any other. She hoped not, though lately she'd seen his capacity for anger grow with the rest of him. So, too, did his pride.

They would both be sorry, Alex had said. Did he also threaten to make Mattie suffer? For what? And what good would it do to write his thoughts down for Richard Longfellow, instead of telling her father, or even Hannah? Was Alex about to make a bid to court Mattie himself? Or did he feel, perhaps, that she had led him on, only to make Lem burn with jealousy? If that had been the case, she'd apparently succeeded! Hardly an official matter, but such were the games, Charlotte recalled uneasily, that often occupied young men and women whose lives were still unsettled.

She wished she'd been able to ask Alex about the spoon she'd found beneath the dock, below the house he often visited. Later, she would also ask what the two women needed most, before she