Columbine by MIRANDA JARRETT

she heard Mercy come inside. Quietly the girl refastened the latch and, creeping past her snoring grandfather, joined Dianna in the overhead loft. From her breathing, Dianna was certain the girl did not sleep, either, but she respected her silence and the privacy of her grief. Cut from the same cloth they most definitely were.

Chapter Seven
    Dianna intended to rise early the next morning and have breakfast waiting on the table for Asa and Mercy. But the sun was well up by the time she awoke, and ruefully she realized the other two were already gone from the house. After three months of sleeping on floors or decks, one night in a bed, albeit one with rope springs and a mattress stuffed with rustling corn husks, had reduced her to a lazy sluggard.
    She washed quickly in a bucket of water by the ladder, hoping that Asa hadn’t brought it especially from the well for her, and neatly braided her hair the way Eunice had taught her on the Prosperity. Then came the question of what to wear. With her London gown little more than rags, Asa had told her to take what she needed from the chest of clothing in the loft. First came a bleached linen shift, the soft, clean fabric almost unbelievably luxurious against her skin.
    Over that she put a dark red kersey skirt and a bodice of blue linsey-woolsey. She fumbled awkwardly to thread and tie the laces behind her back and cursed the lifetime of pampering lady’s maids that had made her embarrassingly clumsy at dressing herself. Finally she tied on an apron and backed down the loft’s ladder to the one large room below that served as kitchen, keeping room and parlor.
    Hands on her hips, she surveyed her new domain and considered where to begin with breakfast. That she had absolutely no experience cooking did not faze her; it could not be so very difficult, given some of the thick-witted cooks she’d met in her father’s houses. She decided to try eggs. All men liked eggs for breakfast, and there was a large basket of them on the table. But first she must build up the fire, and she went outdoors in search of firewood.
    The woodpile was not far from the house, and for good measure she chose the largest log from the top, staggering with it in her arms as she returned to the house. At the doorway she spotted Mercy, trudging from the barn with a bucket of milk.
    “Good morning!” called Dianna cheerfully.
    “It’s a fine day, isn’t it?”
    Stunned, Mercy’s face went white as she studied Dianna from head to foot.
    “You’re not my mother,” she said as she backed away, the milk sloshing from the bucket over her clogs.
    “Ye may take her place and her clothes, but you’re not her and ye never will be!”
    “Mercy, wait, please!” But Mercy had already retreated to the cow shed leaving a trail of spilt milk on the bare ground. Of course, the girl would be upset to see her dressed like her mother; Dianna blamed herself for not being more considerate. After breakfast she would go and set things right with Mercy. With a sigh, she dropped the snow-covered log onto the banked embers of last night’s fire, prodded the ashes for a spark and turned her attention to the eggs.
    With both hands she lifted a heavy iron skillet onto the table and cracked an egg on the side. The eggshell burst with the impact, and its contents splattered down Dianna’s clean apron and onto the floor, white and yolk slipping between the floorboards. The next egg made it into the skillet, but so did its broken shell, and the next three fared no better. As carefully as Dianna tried to pick out the bits of shell, the pieces only slid farther from her fingers into the slippery mess in the skillet. She frowned, concentrating, and not until her eyes stung and she was coughing did she realize the house was rifled with smoke. The fire, something was wrong with the fire, and she turned toward where she thought it was. But there was only more smoke, thick and acrid and blinding her, choking her. Panicking, she tripped