Catherine “Cathy” Courtauld lived on the far side of the river in a small log cabin her husband Jude built before he died of scarlet fever in the summer of 1870. Some people from the nearby town of Bethlehem believed he had picked up something awful from one of the many bordellos he was known to frequent, but Cathy did her best not to listen to such spurious, hurtful gossip. People were jealous of what she and her husband had achieved in such a short span of time, and when folk are jealous, they allow their tongues to wag. That was how she saw it, and nothing much had happened since to convince her otherwise. Jude was a good man, and she missed him. Well, “good” in the sense that he provided. She wasn’t so certain about everything else.
A slim, strikingly handsome woman, she worked tirele
