Free Death of a Dyer by Eleanor Kuhns Page A

mind if Miss Lydia used her table and chair, would she?”
    “No,” Rees said.
    David nodded and picked up the table.
    “Breakfast,” Lydia announced from the porch. “Just oatmeal and coffee, I’m afraid.”
    David gave the rough wood a curious little pat before positioning it in the wagon. Rees placed the chair in after it and clapped a hand on David’s shoulder. “She would be proud of you,” he said as they walked to the house.
    They set out for town as soon as breakfast was done and dawn edged the horizon with pink. A cavalcade of wagons already lumbered toward town, and by sunrise when Rees reached Dugard’s outskirts, the congestion was too great to allow entrance onto Market Street. Rees turned Bessie and joined a line of wagons going around to the east and entering town by way of Water Street. Rees pulled into the yard by Isaac’s smithy and jumped out. David grabbed the table and set off at a run for the space his mother had long ago claimed as her own. Rees followed with the chair and the basket of honey.
    By the time he found David, he’d erected the table and stood at guard. “I’ll get the eggs and Lydia,” said his son, and hared off again. Rees deposited the basket of honey and set up the chair. Then he stood awkwardly by the table, certain that the farmers and their wives were staring at him. But when he looked around, everyone seemed busy and he caught no stray glances.
    When he finally saw David and Lydia approaching, Rees stood aside. Although Lydia cast him a quick glance, she did not speak. As she and David spread out the jugs of honey and a crate of eggs, Rees began walking away from them, toward the Contented Rooster.
    It was once a dark and dirty tavern on the shores of Dugard Pond, but Jack and Susannah Anderson had transformed it into an airy and popular coffeehouse. Today, market day, the line stretched out the door and to the lane in front.
    “Rees!” The shout spun the weaver around. Samuel Prentiss, Rees’s brother-in-law, pushed his way through the crowds toward him. “I thought you might be here, selling the harvest your sister and I produced with our toil.”
    “There isn’t enough of it to sell,” Rees said. “I may have to purchase hay and corn for the winter.”
    “You stole that farm from us, and now my children will starve.” Sam thrust his face belligerently into Rees’s.
    “I took back what was mine,” Rees said, stepping back from Sam’s pungent breath. “And you and Caro could have remained, managing the farm and living on the harvests as well as on the money I gave you from my weaving, if only you hadn’t pushed David out. He is heir to that farm, not a servant.”
    “He’s a spoiled brat. And that farm belonged to Caro’s parents as well as yours,” Sam said. “She has as much right to it as you do.”
    “Except that Dolly and I paid some to my parents for it,” Rees retorted. “And I was left it in my father’s will when he passed on. Caro’s portion bought you a small holding; what happened to that?” An ugly flush rose into Sam’s cheeks and drained away leaving his face dead white.
    Rees, who remembered Sam’s temper from his boyhood, adjusted his stance, just in case Sam rushed him. But Prentiss looked at the excited and attentive crowd and instead whirled around and fled. In the space of a few heartbeats, he disappeared into the throng.
    If Sam was here, then probably Caroline was, too. Rees looked around for her but didn’t see her. For the first time, he wondered what her life was like with Sam Prentiss. Consciously relaxing his fists, Rees started walking again to the Rooster. But his racing pulse did not slow for several minutes, and by then he had joined the queue into the coffeehouse.
    “What was all the shouting about?” asked the sunburned fellow ahead of him. “I couldn’t see anything.”
    “Oh, just an argument,” Rees said with a shrug. He hadn’t expected his first meeting with Caroline and her husband to go