A Brother's Price Part 10

"No harm done." Eldest grinned. "I'm pleased to know our neighbors think of us as good solid stock."

"Aye, we do," Picker said. "You're not drunks, wastrels, smugglers, thieves, or idiots. You're honest in your business, and no one begrudges you thirty-two children when four of them are boys. People wonder that you didn't try for more."

Eldest threw a look where Mother Elder was still looking at the hats. "Now is not the time for counting children."

"Sorry. I forgot." Eldest Picker reached back without looking and selected a thin cigar and offered it as an apology.

"Thank you." Eldest put it in her mouth, reached for her matches, and then, glancing to Mother Elder, dropped the matchbox back into her pocket. "Later," she murmured around the cigar, not adding that the smell would make their pregnant mother nauseous. "Two thousand." Eldest studied the store with narrowed eyes. "It's worth it."

"You thinking of buying?" Jerin asked her, surprised. He didn't think his family had that much cash.

"Your brother's price, even without going to Mayfair, could reach two thousand crowns."

"I thought you wanted a husband." He tried not to whine. What he left unsaid was I thought you were going to swap me I thought you were going to swap me. Swapped families were always closer because cousins sharing both bloodlines were more like sisters than true cousins.

"I do." Eldest shook her head. "But this is a shining coin, Jerin, and it's up for grabs now. If we don't s.n.a.t.c.h it up, it's going to be gone."

"What if I don't bring two thousand crowns?"

"Don't underrate yourself, Jerin." Mother Elder came up holding a wide-brimmed straw hat. She put the hat firmly on his head, then studied him, head c.o.c.ked in speculation. "Remember who your grandfather was. I think we might be able to do both: buy the shop and afford a husband of good breeding."

"You're giving yourself airs. Elder," Picker said. "I could see two thousand with your family's breeding record for boys-but three or four?"

"n.o.bility, they say, pays dearly for good breeding."

"Mama!" Jerin blushed hotly, partly for their discussing him like a prize stallion, partly for the idea that he could command two or three times the normal amount of a brother's price.

"Bah!" Picker scoffed.

"The Queens are sponsoring Jerin's coming out." Summer said quietly as she came up with the front of her shirt filled with stick candy. She counted the sticks out onto the battered wood counter into two uneven piles. "Thirty-six pieces." A silver gil joined the candy on the counter.

"The Queens?" Picker humphed, taking the gil and counting Summer her three quince change. With the ease of lifetime practice, she tore a perfect length of brown paper from a bolt, wrapped the larger pile of candy into a neat package, and tied it off with cord. "You want the rest wrapped?"

"Nope." Summer said, picking up the seven remaining sticks. She held them out to Jerin. "Pick two."

He took a black anise and a brown maple. Summer offered one each to Mother Elder and Eldest, then, shyly, one to Captain Tern.

"You think the Queens' goodwill is worth two thousand crowns?" Picker asked.

"Not so much the Queens' goodwill as the peers' opinion of their own worth." Mother Elder explained. "Downriver, they say if you want a n.o.blewoman to pay for a drink of river water, you say it's a medical tonic brewed for the Queens and charge her a gil."

"So." Picker said dryly, "that's what your sisters sell in that fancy Annaboro store of theirs? River water?"

Mother Elder scowled at the barb, then controlled her irritation. "We'll need a length of veiling to go with the hat. White lace, I would think." She took the hat off of Jerin and measured a length of blue ribbon around the rim. "What a bind. If we wait for Jerin to marry, we have the money without worries. But by waiting, someone might beat us to the purchase."

"We're willing to work with you," Picker said. "Agree to meet our price and sign a contract, help us run the store until you have the full purchase amount, and we'll hold the store off the market until your boy's birthday. If you get your fancy price in Mayfair, then use it to buy the store. If not, you back out of the deal, paying a penalty."

"We're leaving within an hour," Jerin protested, aghast that his family future suddenly hung on the moment.

"What penalty?" Eldest asked.

"Ten percent," Picker stated.

Jerin gasped. Two hundred crowns just to back out of the deal!

"One percent." Mother Elder countered.

"Five," Picker said. "No less."

"One hundred crowns?" Mother Elder glanced at Eldest Whistler and Summer. "It's your brother's price."

"It's a shining coin." Eldest murmured to Summer.

Summer glanced about the store, considering, then nodded. "A wonderful golden shining coin."

"Deal," Eldest Whistler said, and shook hands with the old woman. "Let's go to the Queens' Witness and have the papers drawn up."

Mother Elder gave a silver gil to Summer with instructions to buy the hat, the ribbon, and the lace. Eldest added her ammo, Jerin's cream, and coin for both. With a stern reminder for Summer to guard Jerin, they went off to make the deal permanently legal. Jerin stared after them, slightly stunned. He was not sure how many Picker sisters tended the store, but forty-four Whistlers just had their lives utterly changed. When his sisters split the family, only half would stay on the farm. He would definitely wed on his birthday. If he fetched only two thousand crowns, Eldest and the others would have to wait until Doric was of age to get a husband. Six years would put Eldest into her thirties. If he didn't fetch two thousand crowns, his family would have to pay one hundred crowns to back out of the deal. A heinous amount of money to throw away, but a small price to pay if the worst happened.

Jerin added extra of the blue ribbon to their purchases; it would be pretty braided in his hair. He would need to look his best at Mayfair to fetch a high brother's price; his family was counting on him.

At least an hour remained before the packet arrived. Summer, Captain Tern, and Jerin went out to join Mother Erica and Corelle. They moved the wagon down to the village green and set out a light picnic lunch. Jerin got out his sewing kit and tacked the veil to his new hat between bites of his sandwich.

Corelle and Summer were both pleased with the idea of becoming shopkeepers. The older sisters would take the store, they reasoned, because it would need minding right away.

"No more getting up before dawn!" Corelle cried happily. "No more fighting with stock in the middle of snowstorms. No more watering fields during droughts using endless buckets of water. No more plowing, and planting, and seeding."

Mother Erica laughed at their logic, saying it made more sense for their aging, wiser mothers to mind the store, moving the younger sisters to the city to learn storekeeping as they grew up.

"We at least have worked at our sisters' store in Annaboro," Mother Erica reminded them. "Besides, your baby sisters aren't big enough to take on all that brute work, and your mothers can't tend the farm alone. You know that it takes at least twenty able bodies to manage planting and harvest."

Summer frowned. "But there are only eleven of us. How are we going to work this?"

"We'll manage." Mother Erica smiled. "There are so few opportunities like this. Unless a family ends like the Pickers, or loses everything in some disaster of bad judgment, farms and businesses just aren't sold. Your aunts had to travel to Annaboro to find a business to buy."

"Look!" Summer stood and pointed upriver. A trail of gray smoke drifted above the treetops. A deep-throated whistle sounded, far off and echoing. "The packet is coming."

"Eldest will have to eat on the boat," Mother Erica said, repacking the basket.

The packet rounded the bend as they reached the sloped cobblestone of the landing. It was a triple-decked stern-wheeler with twin smokestacks. Now in sight of the landing, it blasted its whistle again, a deafening howl of near discord. The stevedores caught the mooring ropes and looped them about great pilings set into the stone-work of the levy, tying the stern-wheeler off by bow and stern. The swinging landing stage, fixed with ropes at the bow of the boat, was dropped down to form a gangplank up to the main deck.

The smooth and practiced docking complete, the huge boat was suddenly laid still beside the stone landing, dwarfing all structures in town. Jerin stood in awe, though he had seen it many times before. What great works woman could create!

Jerin recognized one of the women waiting to board, a small hill of bandboxes and steamer trunks beside her. Miss Abie Skinner taught the one-room schoolhouse that his school-aged sisters attended at the intersection of Whistler, Brindle, Fisher, and Brown land. She had been kind enough over the years to extend the cla.s.sroom to Jerin and Doric by sending homework back with their sisters. Occasionally, she even came to the house to teach. Reed-thin, she dressed with the same artistic flair of her handwriting. When Jerin was very young, he had been madly in love with her. He recognized signs of it in Doric now. Their infatuation came, he decided, as a side effect of her being the only female they closely a.s.sociated with who wasn't blood related.

"Miss Skinner." He greeted her with a smile. "You're going to be on this boat too?"

His teacher turned in surprise, smiled with pleasure to see him, then frowned. "Master Whistler, you know that a proper young man never starts a conversation with a woman outside of his family when in public."

Jerin recoiled, hurt. "But I've talked to you lots of times."

"I know, lad, but I shouldn't have let you. 'Once' leads to 'always.' You're leaving Heron Landing, where everyone knows not to mess with your sisters, and your sisters know where they live."

Jerin nodded. "I know not to talk to strangers, but you're Miss Skinner."

Abie Skinner smiled. "Thank you, Master Whistler."

"So, you're going to be on this boat?"

She tried not to grin, then shook her head and laughed. "Yes, Master Whistler. I'm going home."

"For a visit?"

"No, for good. I got a letter from Eldest." She patted her pocket, and a paper crinkled under the pat. "My scattered sisters and I have finally accrued enough money to purchase a husband of modest breeding."

"How wonderful!" Then the implication sank in. "You're not coming back?"

"No." She grinned widely. "Someone else will have to force basic figures and reading onto willful young minds."

"My sisters will miss you." He could think only that Doric would be crushed.

"Some of them. I will miss those ones."

They had two cabins on the second deck. Jerin would share a cabin with one of his sisters. Captain Tern would sleep in the other cabin. They worked out a schedule where at all times at least two of the women would be awake while the other two slept. One of his sleeping sisters would always be in the bunk under the window while he slept. It was as safe as they could make the trip.

That afternoon he took a stroll on the sundeck with Summer and Corelle. He had stepped out of his room intending to pull down his veil. The un.o.bstructed sight of the sunshine on the water checked him. He climbed the stairs to the sundeck with his sisters trailing him.

Jerin expected Corelle or Summer to say something about his veil being up, but they didn't. Feeling someplace between guilty and free, he walked the sundeck, more interested in the fellow pa.s.sengers. They gave him wide smiles and nods of greeting, but, with quick looks at his armed sisters, didn't speak to him.

At the stern, over the churning paddle wheel, he met Miss Skinner.

"Tch, Mr. Whistler, what are you doing?" Miss Skinner reached up and tugged down the veil. "There are people on this boat not to be trusted. If they thought you were an ugly thing behind that veil, they might leave you alone. Don't tempt them by showing them how stunningly beautiful you are."

"I'm not stunningly beautiful."

"Most women only see a few men in their lives. Their father. Perhaps their grandfather. If they are lucky, a brother and their husband. Any other men they see are always veiled. To them, anything with both eyes and sound teeth is a handsome man. My family are portrait painters. My hand is not as good as my sisters', so I decided to teach instead, to see a bit of the world. Before I left, though, I had seen an extraordinary number of men and paintings of men. You, Mr. Jerin Whistler, are the most stunningly beautiful man I have ever seen."

"Me?"

"Yes, you." She twitched the veil, artfully arranging the fold at his neck. "So don't tempt the scruffy lot on this boat more than your mere presence already does."

"Yes, Miss Skinner."

The next morning it was raining. Captain Tern was guarding him while his sisters slept. Miss Skinner came to the door, bearing a gift.

"Here, I have something for you to look at." It was a large book, almost three feet square. She set it down on the table and opened it to reveal maps done in gorgeous color. "This is an atlas. It has maps of all of the countries of the world."

"I wish I could have gone to school," Jerin murmured.

"Tch, I wouldn't have wanted the responsibility of keeping you safe, Mr. Whistler. It would have been too easy for someone to steal you away, and then where would I be? All alone in Heron Landing with the Whistler girls out for my blood."

"Are you happy about getting married?" Jerin asked.

"To tell the truth, I'm giddy as a girl."

"Even though you don't know your husband at all?"

"Honestly"-she blushed-"I haven't thought much about him, just the babies. We had a brother, who was killed a year before we would have swapped him for a husband. Maybe if we hadn't grown up so sure we would be married, it wouldn't have mattered so much. Some days, it's all I can think about, having children of our own."

"Really?"

She nodded unhappily. "The first day of school and the last are always the hardest. The seven-year-olds come in that first day, oh so little and darling. You just want to cuddle them. You try to keep your distance, but at the end of the year, when it's going to be months before you see them again-it just breaks my heart."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she scolded.

"I mean-well, I guess I mean that I feel sorry for you."

"Don't. I'm getting married. We'll have baskets and bushels of babies and get as blase about them as everyone else."

"Blase?" he asked, unsure what the word meant.

"Casual. Careless." She defined the word using ones he did know. "Ever been to a social function and watch the mothers with their babies? Oh, you can't hold the little boys-no one but family gets to hold the boys-but they pa.s.s the baby girls off like sacks of wheat. Anyone can hold them as long as they want. And they sigh over the fact that the baby girls weren't born boys. You want to scream at them how lucky they are, and how they shouldn't take these healthy babies so lightly. And at least once a week you wonder if you're still young enough to carry a healthy child to term and survive delivering it, or maybe you should avoid all the risk, even though the thought of not being pregnant at least once is like putting a gun to your head and-"

She shuddered to a stop, and wiped tears from her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't say things like that to you. I'm happy. I truly am."

He reached out and covered her hand. "I'm sure things will be fine."

"Indeed. Holy Mothers are kind." She sniffed, and forced herself to smile. "Well. I'll leave this with you to study. Eldest can drop it at my cabin later."

With that, she withdrew.

"She should have gone to a crib," Raven murmured after Miss Skinner's footsteps had faded away. "Got herself pregnant before this. It's warped her."

He could not help but feel that she was right. "Are you married, Captain Tern?"