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God bless you, my nurse; one Bodett’s going to make it.”
    She raced barefoot across the dirt floor. “Joss—!”
    “Aidan.” Her voice was just a breath, her hand barely strong enough to feel its squeeze. “I’m sorry I was so hard with you.”
    She shivered, as if in residue from the fever. “Knew I was sick,”
    she whispered. “I didn’t want you carin’ about me at all, if all I was fixin’ to do was die on you.”
    “Shhh,” Aidan soothed. “You need to rest, Joss.”
    “You took good care o’ me. More’n I did them. Wish you’d been here.” Her eyes closed. “One thing left in this life to do an’ I figured I’d die ’fore I could get at it. I was...I was—afraid—” She drew a soft, deep breath. “For you...maybe of you. I don’t know what, but how fear feels.”
    She sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing the damp hair back from Joss’s face. “I know that, too,” she said quietly. “How fear feels.” Joss looked a cautious question at her; Aidan traced the backs of her fingers across her cheek. “Of you. For you. Of here. Of. . . nothing.” Joss closed her eyes, and Aidan knew how closely she had understood that. “We had a hard beginning,” she said softly, “but I know we’ll be friends.”
    Weak fingers tightened around hers. “You might stay?”
    “Of course I’ll stay.” She leaned to press her cheek to her cousin’s face, to brush her lips across mercifully cool skin. “As long as you want me to.”
     
    “I hesitate to intimate that Joss Bodett can’t accomplish anything she’s set on,” Doc said on the porch, inhaling the musky fragrances of his tea and the sweet, damp morning. “I’ve seen her have varying degrees of success, but I’ve never seen her fail. But a farm’s a blamed hard row for two men with a woman in the kitchen. I know Joss; she’ll go where her pig is headed, but if you try to keep up with her—” He shook his head. “In the time I’ve known her she’s done the work of two men because it was required of her. Her brother Ethan was—may I say, less than reliable? Seth fell from the haymow when he was eight; he broke his left hip, and contracted pneumonia in his convalescence. He made a fair enough recovery to allow him to get around with a crutch, but he had no stamina. Joss took up the slack. So did her mother, and my dear, she probably expects you to pick up where Jocelyn left off, not understanding that such a load of work would kill most women.”
    “And of course I’m but a poor little rich girl, raised with servants to attend my every need,” Aidan said dryly, “ergo not only not half the woman my elder cousin Jocelyn was, but barely a quarter. Don’t bury me yet, Doctor. I may surprise you.”
    “I meant no such implication. I know you’re strong, for I’ve seen it. I meant but to imply how much work you’re liable for if you stay, and how likely it is to be for naught.”
    “I’m as short of options as she is, Dr. Pickett.” Doc waited when she hesitated, sure she would tell him now of her condition, but she only shook her head, looking at the split-rail fence and the markers under the willow tree. “But I think I might stay were the world open before me. I’ve never met a soul so critically lonely as is my cousin Joss.”
    Doc’s eyes followed hers to the little cemetery. “Critically lonely.” It was a soft echo. He finished his tea in a swallow and stood, cautious of his balance on his wooden leg. “I’ll help with the hardest labor when and where I’m able,” he said, looking down at her, “but I doubt that a year of my help could ever equal a day of yours.”
    0

CHAPTER THREE
    “Why, Doc, what’s this?” Aidan asked the next Monday, when the broad-shouldered fellow appeared in time to join them for breakfast, for he handed her a paperboard box and held her chair that she might sit to open it. “But I can’t, I’ve ham on—”
    “I’ll worry about the ham.” He didn’t worry about it