“Is that something you want to say out loud?” Nic took off his hat as the screen door slammed shut behind him. Her frankness didn’t surprise him. In that one instance, she and Eustacia were very much alike.
Piles and stacks of clothes gave evidence that today was laundry day. He sniffed the unique fragrance of washing soap in the air. Tasted the moist heat in the air from the buckets of hot water which must be boiling on the stove.
“No one lives in the houses on either side of us,” Eulalia supplied. Small curls of hair lay plastered against her forehead. Her hands, wrinkled and chapped, tangled in the material of her worn, bland skirt. “Even if someone did live there, it wouldn’t matter, Nicander.”
Dragging his eyes away from Eulalia’s disheveled but lovely appearance with difficulty, he surveyed the interior of the home.
Aged wallpaper lined the walls. Rose-colored rugs that had seen better days warmed the dark wooden floors. In some places, he could see cracks where the house was nearly shaken off of its foundation. Yet, despite that, the place still carried the lingering ambience of what once may have been a happy home.
“Looks like a good place as any to get back on your feet, Eulalia.”
“No, Nicander,” she denied. “No place could be as good as the cabin I once shared with Josiah.”
Hearing the slight wobble in her voice, Nic followed her into the cramped quarters of the kitchen. “It’s okay if you miss him, Eulalia. Lord knows I do.” He tried to keep his own voice steady but a strangled croak made it out anyway.
His best friend. Gone.
Taken by the good Lord like he said he would.
“Are we going to keep tiptoeing around the issue, Nicander?”
He drew in a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to think about Josiah’s self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nor did he think it was prudent to discuss the kiss that he and Eulalia shared back in May. Or maybe, he didn’t want to revisit it. It had happened a scant few weeks after Josiah’s death. Like the knowledge of his friend’s death, the memory of that kiss was still too unsettling. Too raw. Too fresh.
From the look on her face, he knew Eulalia wasn’t going to let this go. They had to talk about it. Had to clear this latent tension between them. This awareness that had never existed before that day.
“Where do you want to start?”
She eyed him for a moment. “Did you tell your wife?”
Nic sighed and went to sit in the chair next to the table piled with clean clothes. Using his foot, he pushed away a basket of unfolded clothes and stretched out his long legs. “No, I didn’t tell her.”
Eulalia’s shoulders drooped and the strain somewhat eased from the contours of her face. He didn’t blame her. Though he’d been raised in a home where truth and honesty were placed on a gold pedestal, common sense wasn’t too far behind it.
If Guinevere discovered he’d kissed another woman—
“I’m glad though I shouldn’t be.” Eulalia picked up a pair of Winston’s breeches from a pile on the floor and went over to a small clay pot filled with potted soap. Slathering it on the child’s clothes, she said, “If the situation between you and her wasn’t so—”
“Complicated,” Nic provided. An understatement if there ever was one.
She nodded. “Then I would be more than happy to admit my sin to her and ask for forgiveness.”
She went over to the metal tub where soapy water swished around a corrugated washboard leaning along the inside of it. Sitting on the stool, she soaked the breeches into the water and then began to scrub them against the board. “But things aren’t that simple so we have to settle for this.”
Nic observed her tiny hands fight with dogged tenacity to get dirt out of the material. “How do we settle this then?”
She didn’t answer for a moment as she dropped the now clean breeches into another tub filled with clear water and rinsed the soap from them. Wringing out the excess water, she placed them in a nearby basket with other damp clothes.
Wiping the moisture from her flushed face with the back of her arm, she said, “This way, Nicander.” Her wet hand, dripping with water, dropped to her side. “I’m sorry for kissing you. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Nic shifted in the chair. “You don’t have to ask for forgiveness, Eulalia. That’s solely on me.”
“Yes, I do, Nicander. We both know it.”
With a quick, sudden movement, she jumped up from the stool and went over to where the woodburning stove stood in the corner. “I took advantage of your kindness and your solicitude that day.” Her blue eyes seemed bright in her face. “I’m the one who forced myself on you. If I were a man, you could have accused me of—”
“If you were a man, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he thought it prudent to remind her.
A tiny smile eased away more of the lines of strain along her mouth. “Well, you understand me, don’t you?”
Nic pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest as he thought about it. From her point of view, maybe she recalled how her arms had locked around his neck. She must have remembered how her fingers had teased the whorls of hair at the back of his neck before she tugged his head down to hers. To her way of thinking, it was she who had kissed him with a fiery, inciteful passion.
“I understand that may be the way you perceived it, Eulalia,” Nic replied slowly. “But if we’re going to be honest—”
“We are,” she insisted with a lift of that rounded chin.
“You may have started it but I finished it.”
A vibrant blush stained her cheeks.
Nic leaned forward, resting his folded arms on the top of his knees. “I want you to know, first and foremost, that I am not that kind of man. Please know that I have never until then, even looked at another woman, much less did what we did. Nor have I since that day.”
“It never crossed my mind, Nicander. You wouldn’t be Josiah’s friend if you were.”
“Yet, I have to admit, I was a willing participant in that kiss, too.”
Willing participant didn’t begin to capture his level of…involvement. Starving, ravenous, hungry beggar would be a bit more on par with what had happened.
Her arms may have locked around his neck but his arms had clamped around her waist and drew her softness into him. Her fingers, misleading in their delicate-like form, may have scraped his scalp but his own had ripped the pins from her hair and tangled themselves in the silky tresses.
She may have brought his head down to hers but he gave no resistance. Indeed, he’d been incapable of tearing himself away from the lure of her mouth. The touch of her lips scattered every thought from his mind.
In those frenzied, feverish moments, it didn’t matter that Eulalia was the widow of his best friend. The existence of his own wife had no bearing. All that had made sense was the glory of the joining of their lips.
It had been so long since he’d experienced a woman’s touch. So long since he’d felt that peculiar scented softness of the feminine form. Heard the wispy moans and sighs of pleasure as the kiss went on and on.
Only when an image of Guinevere flashed in his mind did he begin to rethink exactly what he was doing. He could see his wife’s face, heavily lined with her customary suspicion and jealousy. Only then did he rip his lips away and come to his senses.
“I’ve asked myself many times why I kissed you, Nicander,” Eulalia was saying as he came back to the present. “I’ve no answer to that.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “If I at least knew why, then I could tell you. But I don’t have one.”
She went over to the cabinet and opened it. “Where are my manners? I didn’t offer you anything to drink. I’ve a pitcher of lemonade in the icebox outside. Would you like some?”
Nic rose and took two steps over to where she stood in the kitchen hiding behind the veil of social convention and politeness.
“Tell me the truth, Eulalia. Do you regret what we shared that day?”
He had to
know.
“Regret?” Her brow furrowed.
“Do you regret it?” he repeated. “Because I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t regret it at all.”
What was she supposed to say to that? Yes? No? I don’t know?
While Eulalia tried her best to articulate her thoughts, Nicander went on. “I think that is what has been bothering me this entire time. The fact that I don’t regret the kiss.”
Eulalia swallowed, the offer for lemonade dissipating amidst this new revelation.
Nicander dragged his long, thick fingers through his equally, long, thick hair. “I’ve gone on my knees before the Lord and begged His forgiveness for breaking my vows to my wife. I know that I’ve offended Him even more than I have my wife.”
Eulalia gave a slow nod.
“But I have no regrets about kissing you. I’ve tried to feel remorseful. Tried to feel some sense of shame for what I did. But I can’t.” He shook his head. “Can a man be truly sorry if he can’t feel either of those emotions? And if he can’t, what does that make him?”
Who was she to answer? “I don’t know.”
He let out a huff of aggravation. “This is one of those times I wish Reverend Edmundson was still alive.”
“Reverend Edmondson? You mean, Fannie Pearl’s husband?”
“Yeah. When Josiah came here all those years ago, he’d go to Reverend Edmundson for advice. When he’d write to me, he’d give me pieces of wisdom that old preacher had given him.”
“But I thought your grandfather—”
“I could hardly tell Grandfather Clyford about this, could I? He’d have horse-whipped me after beating me with his gold bible.”
“I see.” Although she had never met Reverend Montgomery, she’d heard enough about the man from Josiah to know he could be rigid at times. A kind man, yes, but unyielding once his mind was made up.
But where did that leave her when it came to Nicander’s confession? Did she regret how she succumbed to the force of…whatever it was that had propelled her actions forward?
She pivoted away from the troubled blue gray eyes and went back over to where the water in the bucket boiled on the stove. “Josiah hadn’t been dead for three weeks.” She stared into the boiling water, seeing not its murky depths but the sight of the town after the quakes. “Silverpines lay in ruins. Women and children wandered about in almost a stupor. Our fathers, brothers, h-husbands…,” she stopped, feeling a tide of sorrow almost overtake her.
She felt, more than saw, Nicander take a step toward her.
“All of our men—gone.” She snapped her fingers. “How can life change so quickly? How can you go from being happy to miserable in one single moment?”
Glancing back at Nicander, she asked, “Shouldn’t the good Lord, at the very least, give us a three-day warning? A sign that says, ‘In the next three days, calamity will strike.’? Then we could be prepared for it.”
A sad smile barely lifted the corners of Nicander’s mouth. “C’mon, Eulalia. The good Lord could give us three days, thirty years, or three hundred years and we’d still say we hadn’t enough time to prepare.” His shoulders lifted. “Maybe that’s why we have to live each day as if it’s our last. So we don’t squander the time we do have.”
Eulalia turned her attention back to the water. It frothed on the surface, bubbling and popping out minute beads of heated water that landed on the surface of her arm. They should have stung her, but she felt nothing more than a vague, distant discomfort.
“You’re probably right, Nicander. When the ground stopped shaking for the second time in as many days, when I received word that my Josiah was gone, taken, in some mudslide—”
She shivered, the coldness of that horrible moment seeping anew into her bones. “My life—”
“Became a nightmare,” Nicander finished for her. He’d come up beside her and cupped her shoulders. “Believe me. I know how a single moment can derail the rest of your life.”
Awkwardly she patted his hand. The heat from his palms melted away the remembered icy horror of that time. “Conmen came in droves, causing all sort of ruckus. Fortunately, Betsy Pike married Marshal Sewell, and he became the law here. Everything was so…disjointed. I was disjointed. If I hadn’t had Winston or Tabitha…,” She shook her head. “I don’t know how I would have survived.”
Thinking back to those first days after Josiah’s death, the void, the beautiful detestable call of the void, of the need to sink into the pit of despair that had cried out to her. That almost irresistible desire to fall into that gloomy blackness. That seductive siren’s wail to numb the pain if only she submitted to hopelessness.
When she found out her mother had been taken away to live with the nuns because of the grief of losing her husband, Eulalia had made a promise to herself she would never let that happen to her.
That was before she lost her own husband. Suddenly, and frighteningly, the dark desire of leaving reality behind, of wallowing in that sadness didn’t seem like such an awful idea.
But…
Her children needed her. They needed her to resist that pit of sorrow that charmed with its blissful empty promises. She and Eustacia had not been enough for her mother to retain her sanity. Eulalia made a decision to fight that call because she wanted her children to know that they were enough for her to keep fighting.
“They’re good kids, Eulalia.”
A watery laugh erupted from her throat. “The best. The apples of Josiah’s eyes. He loved them with the same unwavering devotion he had for me.”
Then how could you kiss another man when his body wasn’t even cold in the grave?
The intrusion of the thought made her gasp. In that moment, she knew the answer to the question Nicander had asked.
“What is it?”
She lifted her eyes from the boiling water to meet Nicander’s concerned stare. “No, Nicander, I don’t regret our kiss. And like you, I have to wonder why I don’t.”
Was it because of what Josiah had made her promise? To marry Nicander in the event of his death? Had that promise somehow given her permission to not just initiate the kiss but to enjoy it?
The air in the kitchen shifted. Thickened like a cloud swelling with the promise of rain. Charged like lightning in a gathering thunderstorm. Nicander’s hands on her shoulders grew heavy although he hadn’t moved. She couldn’t look away from the deepening intensity of his gaze. It was like this the day they had shared that kiss.
A gravid pause.
Stilted resistance and then…surrender.
Nicander’s eyes drifted almost helplessly to her mouth. “Eulalia?”
It was a question and a plea. How was she to answer but to slowly raise herself on tiptoes while his head came forward to—
“Mama!”
The screen door crashed open, breaking the spell that had encapsulated them. Only seconds stood between as they pulled away from each other before Winston and Tabitha dashed into the kitchen.
“Uncle Nic!” They both squealed and in one motion, hurled themselves at him.
How Nicander braced himself for the impact of two gangly children, all angles, knobby elbows, and rounded knees was beyond her. He caught each child with deceptive ease and hefted them up into his arms.
“How are you, little monkeys?” He greeted them with a wide grin.
“We’re so glad to see you,” Winston screamed in his ear. Nicander winced. Eulalia covered her mouth to keep her mirth from showing.
“I’m glad to see you, too. But you don’t have to shout, Winston. I’m right here.”
“Sorry, Uncle Nic,” the boy apologized and then scooted out of his arms. Eulalia noted a brief, fleeting expression of relief cross Nicander’s face. She averted her head and gave voice to a rather strange sounding cough. It turned into a harsh wheeze when Tabitha asked in a soft, innocent voice, “Uncle Nic, when are you going to marry Mama so we can call you Papa?”
CHAPTER THREE
“Mind if I join you, stranger?”
Nic paused in the cutting of another portion of the delicious juicy steak the cook at the Silverpines Inn had prepared especially for his consumption. Without looking up, he answered, “Actually, Eustacia, I do mind.”
“Well, too bad, Mr. Fireman. I’m going to sit with you anyway, unless you want to cause a scene in this fine establishment.”
The last person he wanted to breathe air with was Eustacia. Yet, having been raised by parents who taught him to display polite decorum even to one’s enemies, he set the knife and fork down and stood. “Please join me, Miss Goodwin.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Montgomery.”
Eustacia settled down on the seat across from him. He knew he should have gone behind her and pushed the seat up, but societal conventions only went so far. The woman was an unwanted guest, but he knew her well enough to know she had to have something up her sleeve in order to seek him out like this.
Where Eustacia Goodwin was concerned, one could not be too careful.
A waiter came and took Eustacia’s order for a meal. After that was completed, she leaned back in the comfortable chair.
“You’re looking good, Nic.”
“So you’ve said.” He tried to return to his own meal but with Eustacia sitting there, looking as pleased as a cat with its mouth stuffed with a canary, she’d ruined his appetite.
Not that his appetite had been all that good to begin with.
His stomach still churned from the effects of the conversation he’d had with Eulalia. A talk that had started with the best of intentions had ended with obscuring the situation even more between them.
Eulalia’s confession that she hadn’t regretted their kiss stirred the hive of bees buzzing in his head. This whole thing confused him. They were both God-fearing people so why were they acting like they weren’t?
He’d come back to the Silverpines Inn in order to get some clarity. He reviewed what he knew of his best friend’s life before he passed away.
Josiah and Eulalia hadn’t touched each other until they were married. Not that Josiah hadn’t sown his wild oats. Far too frequently he had. But when he’d met his future wife eleven years ago at the age of nineteen, he’d given up his womanizing ways and had clung to her.
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