The Hunger(16)

“You know what they say about men who remain single too long, Mr. Stanton,” Peggy Breen said, mischief in her eyes. “They start acting strangely.”

“Are you saying I’m unsociable, Mrs. Breen?” he asked, mock offended. “And here I thought I was being right friendly.”

“I’m saying you’re in danger of becoming one of those sour old bachelors,” Breen said, as the other women laughed. “It’s better to be neighborly, don’t you think? To get along?” Stanton thought he detected a certain shift in Peggy Breen’s tone: not an observation, but a warning.

Lavinah Murphy jumped back in, seemingly oblivious to the point Breen was trying to make. “I’ve been married three times. Where’s the fun in being alone, I always say? Better to have someone to share the journey with you. Peggy’s right, Mr. Stanton. It would be a shame to waste a man as fine as you.”

More laughter. He even caught Doris Wolfinger eyeing him shyly.

“I don’t imagine many women would put up with a man like me,” he said, to make the women laugh, although he knew, deep down, that it was true. He didn’t deserve a good woman, not after what he’d done, or rather failed to do.

“I would bet there are women—even in our little caravan—who think otherwise, Mr. Stanton, and would prove it to you, if you gave them half a chance,” Lavinah Murphy said. “Spent less time off by yourself and more time with the rest of us.”

He didn’t like the subtle implications in her words, in the way Lavinah squinted at him, appeared to study him beneath long lashes. The women had their own kind of power, he knew. All it would take was one accusation and they would be at him. It was the same as it had been before. No one had doubted what Lydia’s father had said about him back home, even though he was the grandson of one of the most prominent ministers on the East Coast. It had happened over a dozen years ago, yet it still made his heart seize with a kind of panic.

“I try to steer clear of women I can never have.” He stood up, all too aware of how hypocritical the words were and was just grateful Tamsen wasn’t there to hear them.

“Then perhaps you’ll find a sweetheart on the trail,” Lavinah Murphy said. “The good Lord wants us all paired up.”

“Soon all the best girls will be taken,” one of the younger women chimed in. Sarah Fosdick. She was only recently married herself, and obviously a little drunk. “You’ll be left with an old sow.” She laughed.

“You’ll have to forgive my sister, Mr. Stanton,” a voice behind him said. “I think she’s had a touch too much spirits.”

He turned and saw a girl he recognized vaguely as Mary Graves. She was sharp-featured and very tall for a woman. He’d never seen her up close before. Her eyes were extraordinary, the gray of an early dawn.

“You’re Franklin Graves’s daughter, then?” he said, although he knew it. He had noticed her before but it seemed she was always with her family, surrounded by her parents or a horde of little children clamoring for her attention.

“I am,” she said. “One of them, at least.”

The women’s chatter died off as the two began walking together almost unconsciously, simply drifting away from the others to head toward a stand of pines on the edge of the encampment.

“I hope you don’t think me presumptuous giving you advice, Mr. Stanton, but you should just ignore them.” Her skirts fluttered with every step, grazing the wild prairie grass. She walked with a long, loping stride that reminded him of a young mare, fine and athletic. “They’re only teasing you. Married women don’t like to see a man by himself. I think it makes them nervous.”

“Why should a single man make them nervous?”

She laughed. “It is one of the mysteries of the world, I suppose.”

“Edwin Bryant—did you meet Edwin?—had a theory about this. He thought it appeared to be a kind of rebuke, choosing not to marry.” As they walked, the picnic shrank to a miniature circus in the distance, a blur of movement and color, until all that was left was the faint drone of Halloran’s fiddle carried on the wind and the occasional shriek of a child’s laughter. People would talk, of course, if they walked too far together. But Stanton didn’t care, and anyway, he wanted to get away from the other women before he said something he regretted.

It appeared that Mary Graves wasn’t concerned about gossip, either.

She frowned in concentration. “Rebuking women, or the institution of marriage?”

He hesitated, thinking it over. He liked the quick, easy way she spoke. So many women seemed to turn their words over in their mouths like sugar cubes, until you could never be sure of the shape of the original thought. “Both, I think.”

“Some women might find it insulting, but I don’t. Not everyone is meant to marry,” she said. “Did you know that Lavinah Murphy married her fourteen-year-old daughter to a man she’d only known for four days? My stepsister was right about one thing. There aren’t many eligible women left in the party,”

He shook his head. “Does this mean you’re spoken for, Miss Graves?” He had meant it mostly as a joke, but when her face clouded, the words took on a sudden, hollow seriousness.

“My fiancé died recently. That’s why my family is headed west,” she said.