The Devil's Cold Dish by Eleanor Kuhns Page B

basket still over her arm.
    â€œShe wouldn’t accept it.” Lydia turned to face Rees. Her time outside in the sunshine helping in the fields and tending to the bees had browned her skin and streaked the hair around her cap with gold. “Oh, Will,” she said, her voice breaking with dismay, “as desperate as she is, she wouldn’t accept my basket.”
    Rees’s belly tightened. “Because of me,” he said. “Because she thinks I shot her husband.”
    â€œNo. No,” Lydia said, putting a gloved hand on his arm. “Not you. She said she heard rumors I was a witch.” She tried to smile but Rees could see the tears just under the surface. “Mrs. Ward assured me she didn’t believe in such gossip, oh no, but for the sake of her children…” Her voice trailed off and she swiped at her eyes. “They were so hungry, Will. I could see it. The way they stared at my basket. But Mrs. Ward was too frightened to accept the food.”
    Rees realized his hands were trembling with anger and his stomach was so queasy he thought he might throw up. “I see.” He paused. They were both too upset to go straight home and anyway he had only haying to look forward to. “Let’s stop at the Contented Rooster. Take of some refreshment and talk about this before we go home.”
    â€œYour sister is expecting you and I have to start pulling the honey from the hives.”
    â€œWe won’t be gone much longer,” Rees said, lifting the basket from her arm and putting it with the flour in the wagon. “And it will be good to have a few moments where we can talk in peace.”
    â€œVery well.” Lydia managed a slight smile. “That will be pleasant.”
    When Rees and Lydia entered the coffeehouse, Susannah Anderson, the hostess, stepped forward to greet them. She was a few years younger than Rees’s thirty-six and they’d known one another since dame school. She was dressed in pale yellow sprigged cotton and, despite the matronly cap covering her blond curls, she looked like the girl Rees remembered from his teens.
    As she approached, leaving the jolly group with which she had been conversing, a burst of laughter followed her. Rees glanced over at them. “Something amusing?”
    â€œOh, stories of old man Winthrop’s ghost are circulating again.” Susannah shook her head. “The poor man has been dead and buried the better part of ten years and still people talk about mysterious lights in his house and boys dare each other to steal apples from his orchard.”
    â€œI did that,” Rees said with an answering smile. “Old man Winthrop was fearsome enough alive.”
    Susannah nodded but said, “Oh, the boys dare each other to go to his orchard at dusk, when spirits are most active. No one has had the courage yet.”
    â€œHe was a notorious miser,” Rees said. “If I believed in ghosts, his is the ghost I could see returning to protect his property.”
    â€œI agree. In my opinion, his parsimony killed him. It drove away his wife and children and when he fell ill there was no one to care for him. Why, his body wasn’t discovered for over two weeks. But a ghost? You and I both know that is simply a tale.”
    â€œThere are still people who believe in them,” Rees said. “Even Father Stephen.”
    â€œYes. And my own husband, Jack.” Susannah shook her head, smiling with amusement. “Coffee?” Rees turned a look of inquiry upon his wife.
    â€œTea for me,” she said.
    â€œOne coffee, one tea,” he said. Susannah hurried away. As Rees pulled out the chair for Lydia he noticed that they were attracting furtive glances from the other customers. But when Rees tried to catch someone’s eye, suddenly everyone was gazing elsewhere.
    Susannah returned a few minutes later with a teapot, Rees’s coffee, and a plate of scones. “You both look