Sins of a Shaker Summer Read Online Free Page B

using up too many of the herbs, and we had to stop! Well, I said, ‘The herbs are ours, too, you know, and they were ours before they were yours, and where would you be without the kitchen sisters, anyway?’ And she said she could live on plain water and bread, which she could easily make herself. She said herbs are wasted on cooking and that . . . that we were just a bunch of gossipy old hens.” The tears had spilled over, and Gertrude was trying to mop them up with her sleeve without letting go of her cabbage.
    Rose put an arm around her shoulders. Dealing with tears was not her strength, but she had learned from Agatha that sometimes a touch is better than any words, so she said none. As Gertrude settled down, Rose considered the hints she was gathering about Patience. An unpredictable woman—blunt, judgmental, harsh, arrogant, perhaps gifted. But was she anything else? Was she unthinking enough toleave a colorful, poisonous compound lying around to tempt children? Could she even have enticed them into drinking or eating something, as part of one of her “precious experiments”? It was time to get to know this woman better.

FOUR
    R OSE HAD NOT ENTERED THE T RUSTEES ’ O FFICE FOR WEEKS . It had been her home and her workplace for ten years. Leaving it, moving to the Ministry House to live and work as eldress, had been a wrenching change. She had thought it best to throw herself into her new role and to cut her ties as fully as possible with her old one.
    She sat in a ladder-back chair in the office that used to be hers, facing Brother Andrew, the new trustee. Everything looked the same, yet strange somehow, like her retiring room seemed after she’d returned from visiting another Shaker village. The strip of pegs encircling the wall held a man’s blue Sabbathday surcoat and a broad-brimmed hat. The aged pine of the double desk had the same orange glow, but was perhaps not quite as tidy as when she— Rose stopped herself before her thoughts went beyond uncharitable to prideful.
    Andrew Clark watched her in silence as she drew herself back to her mission. He seemed to know when she had returned.
    â€œHave you brought news of the children?” he asked.
    â€œNay, there is little news. I was hoping that you could shed some light on this mystery,” Rose said.
    â€œMe?” Andrew’s dark eyebrows arched in surprise.
    Rose regarded him for a long moment. “Surely you realize that Josie asked you to examine the girls’ symptomsbecause she hoped you might recognize them. In fact, it seemed to us that you did. Yet you said nothing.” Rose gazed at him with an expectant tilt to her head. The gesture had often extracted information from hesitant informants, but Andrew only frowned.
    â€œI’m sorry, Rose, but I could not identify what the girls might have eaten, if that’s what they did. Certainly there are several plants or medicines that could cause such symptoms if eaten or taken to excess, but . . . It seemed to me that Josie did the best thing possible for them—she gave them an emetic. That’s all I would have recommended.”
    â€œAndrew, I apologize for being so insistent, but if there’s anything, anything at all that you suspect, we can’t afford not to know.”
    â€œTruly, I would never keep knowledge to myself if it would help those children. You must believe me.”
    Andrew leaned toward her in what felt like familiarity, though Rose told herself it was only supplication. She wanted to believe him. Despite his aura of secretiveness, she liked him. He was a refreshing change from Wilhelm. Andrew wore his dark hair fairly long so that brown waves brushed the stand-up collar of his work shirt. His trim beard challenged Wilhelm’s edict that the brethren be clean-shaven. Though his clothing resembled the loose, plain work clothes of the nineteenth-century brethren, his brown shirt and trousers had a