I can say for the rest of Haven’s End.”
“Don’t get your dander up. I’m not saying you are. But the less time you spend over there, the better.”
Geneva glared at her but decided she’d said enough.
When Mrs. Stillman saw that Geneva wasn’t going to say anything more, she sighed and smoothed down the front of her apron once more.
“Well, I’ve spoken my piece. I’ll leave the butter with you. You make sure you come by and get a pail of milk. Need to put some meat on your bones.” Her neighbor looked her critically up and down. She’d long ago stopped admonishing her to wear a dress, but never managed to hide her looks of disapproval.
“What’s that you got there?” Mrs. Stillman’s chin jutted toward the book perched on the flat stone.
“Just a book.”
She chuckled. “Where are you going with a book?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You aren’t going…to lend it to a neighbor?” Her gaze traveled down the road toward the captain’s house.
Geneva looked down at the broken clamshells at her feet, noticing how green and damp the grass was along the edges of her path.
“A young woman oughtn’t be visitin’ a man alone. It’s not proper.”
Geneva wished she could just walk off and leave her nosy neighbor, but she didn’t want to do anything to cause harm to the captain. People were condemning him enough as it was. She thought of the way he’d told her that Miss Harding had broken the engagement and gone with another man. He had stated it so simply, but Geneva had sensed the pain behind the admission.
The captain didn’t need her adding to his woes. He needed her protection from the villagers’ gossip.
She cleared her throat, looking Mrs. Stillman in the eye. “Cap’n Caleb hasn’t done nothin’ that wasn’t proper and decent. I just offered some help to start his garden. There hasn’t been any more to it than that.”
“Well, you take care, my dear. I know you have no one in the world to speak for you. I feel it’s my bounden duty to look after you as if you was my daughter.”
“Yes’m.” Geneva looked at the butter. “Well, I’d best get this out of the sun.” She gave her neighbor a final nod. “I’ll be seein’ ya. Thank you kindly for the butter.” She turned back toward her door, hoping that by the time she came out, Mrs. Stillman would be gone.
She could feel her neighbor’s gaze on her until she closed the door behind her. She waited, peering through her curtain until the older woman climbed back up the hill, before venturing out again.
Captain Caleb was nowhere to be seen outside his yard, so Geneva headed toward the kitchen door, forgetting about Mrs. Stillman as her thoughts turned to her impending reading lesson. Her heart began pounding with each step she took closer to the house.
She heard the captain’s voice immediately after her knock, bidding her come in. She turned the doorknob and entered his kitchen. It was a large room, larger than her entire house including the lean-to. Not as large as the big hotel kitchen down at the harbor, but larger than any other kitchen she’d seen.
“Come on in. I’m back here.”
Geneva followed the captain’s voice through a dining room and into a long, airy room at the back of the house. Her first impression was space. So much empty space. Space and light. The room had a clean, swept feeling. It contained very little furniture. The walls that faced the windows were lined with empty bookcases. She ventured farther along the shiny wooden floors. Two framed pictures hung one atop the other on one wall. Square-rigged ships. She wondered whether they were from his father’s line.
The focal point was the windows, a whole row of them overlooking the sea. It was exactly what she’d imagined it would look like, the view from a house right at the end of the Point.
“That’s the reason I bought this piece of land.”
Geneva jumped at the sound of the captain’s voice behind her.
He came and stood beside her. “I took one look at the view from the old house that used to stand here, and knew this was where I wanted to build my home.”
Geneva just nodded, too awed by the fact that the captain’s thoughts and hers had coincided so perfectly. “It’s the most beautiful spot in Haven’s End.”
He glanced at her. “You’re just up the hill.”
“I look out onto the bay. I like it well enough. But this is the wide-open sea.”
He nodded in understanding. “I imagine the gales blow fierce in winter.”
“You keep a good fire goin’, you’ll be all right.”
He motioned to her book. “Shall we get started? Come, I’ve set up a table out here on the porch. As long as the weather is so nice, I thought we might as well be outside.” He led her through a glass-paned door to a veranda.
Geneva sat and looked from the captain, seating himself so close to her, to her mother’s book in her hands, and finally to the shimmering sea beyond the two of them. Mrs. Stillman, the rest of Haven’s End and Miss Harding were all somewhere far behind them. Only she and the captain existed in this world. Suddenly, she felt as if she were tasting a little bit of heaven.
The captain held out a hand. “May I?”
She nodded and handed him the book.
He laid it on the table and opened it. She saw him frown and began to worry that something was wrong.
He looked at her. “This is in French.”
She stared at him, her thoughts tumbling around, but all pointing in one direction: once again she’d failed.
When she didn’t speak, he asked her, “Do you understand what that means? It’s written in another language. It wouldn’t do you much good to learn to read in French.”
“It was my ma’s. She spoke the language.”
“Your mother was French?”
“Only half. But she was raised in a convent, in Québec. I reckon that’s all they spoke to her up there.”
The captain smiled at her. “You say it like a native. Did your mother teach you her native tongue?”
Geneva shook her head. “No. I heard her say a word now and then, but I didn’t understand it. Pa made her speak English whenever he was around.” She looked beyond him toward the sea. “I remember she’d call me chérie. And she gave me a long, funny-sounding name.”
“Your name is not Geneva?”
She shook her head. “Geneviève.” She pronounced it just the way she used to hear her mother say it, with the airy g sound and the last syllables all running together like a softly expelled breath. “Trouble was, Pa couldn’t say it right, and ended up deciding it should be plain old ‘Geneva,’ but Ma always said it the French way. Geneviève,” she repeated. She turned to
