by Lynda J. Cox
“That’s the whole crux of it, isn’t it?” He twisted his head over his shoulder again. The distance she saw earlier had re-entered his eyes.
Crux. She had no idea exactly what the word meant and to admit to that might be the tipping point to guarantee his departure. She could guess what it meant but if she was wrong...Abigail lowered her head. “I don’t know what that word means. Crux, that is. That word.”
The rustle of his frock coat reached her though he didn’t respond to her confession. In the strained silence, she lifted her head to meet his gaze. One brow lifted slightly. Her cheeks heated with her humiliation and her mouth felt as dry as any arroyo in the middle of July. She had never felt so intimidated or lacking as she did at that moment.
“I never had a lotta schooling,” she managed to whisper, all the while twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt. Another nervous habit she hadn’t been able to break. She let go of the material and shoved her hands into her pockets. “I still ai...am not a good writer.”
Crawling into a deep hole and pulling the earth in over her suddenly seemed to be an excellent idea in the light of his further raised brow. That her backwoods accent made itself heard loud and clear only added to her mortification. Too late, she also realized she admitted she hadn’t written her letters to him. “I’m not stupid, just not schooled good.”
“Please accept my apology if you believe I inferred you are lacking intelligence.” His gaze shifted from her to the opened doorway. “However, we still haven’t resolved this issue. I risk Ethan’s well-being—”
“I would never hurt a child.”
“I did not say you would. However, I will not risk further damage than has already been inflicted on him by his mother’s death and my failure to...” He trailed off, his gaze never straying from the open door.
“You didn’t fail him because you were captured and held in a Union prison.”
“I wasn’t there when he and Georgianna needed me the most.” His voice became a low snarl. “By anyone’s definition, that is a failure.”
“You did not fail him.” Abigail reached a hand out, hesitated, and then settled her palm on his lower left arm. The wasted muscling solved the mystery of why he had so far kept his hand buried in the pocket of his coat. Either he had no mobility in his arm and hand or he was embarrassed with the visible reminder. “No more than Sam failed me when he died in a Union prison. You’re here, now, with Ethan. He still needs you.”
Mathew tilted his head to her hand. “I will repeat that I will not risk further damage to his emotional stability on a proxy which may or may not become permanent.”
“Then make it permanent.” Abigail fought to keep her voice low, to hide how frantic her heart beat and how desperately it ached for his son. “Surely marriages have been built from lesser reasons than wishing to protect a child.”
Mathew dropped another glance at her hand on his lower arm, this time in a more pointed manner. “If anything happened to me before I got here, at least Ethan would have someone.” His jaw clenched in what she recognized as anger. “You want me to risk my son on your illusion of desiring children? Desiring children and rearing children are two very different things. A proxy marriage was a risk I took because your letters...”
Her letters. They were her words and her thoughts, but not her writing. Abigail withdrew her hand in degrees, as if she gave ground to a cornered rattler. His words stung. “Are you always this blunt and cruel?”
“I’d say I’m pragmatic—it means to be sensible and realistic without succumbing to emotion—”
The heat searing her cheeks should have blistered her skin.
“—and as a physician, I cannot afford to either have or offer vain hope. So, what is it the reality you wish to build this marriage of ours on?”
Could she walk away from this? Her gaze shifted from him to the child still sitting in rigid anticipation at her table. How much had Ethan overheard? How much had he understood? Anger tightened her focus and compressed her heart. She made herself lean closer to Mathew. “The only reality there needs to be is for you to be a competent physician for this town. That’s the only reality I care about. Stay or leave. The choice is yours, Dr. Knight. If you leave, you cannot ensure Ethan will always have a home and that stability you seek for him.”
She shoved her way past him into the house and paused at Ethan long enough to lift him from the chair and set him on his feet. The desire to pull him into her arms and envelope him within a hug tightened her throat. She forced what she hoped to be a normal tone to her voice. “Your father is out on the porch.”
“No wanna leave. I good. I good!”
“Yes, you are. You’re a very good boy, Ethan.” Despite her attempts to keep her voice low, somehow, he had overheard their conversation. Ethan tilted his head to her, his dark eyes even darker with fear. The searing lump in her throat felt as large as all of Texas. This small boy had found his way into her heart already, and it was breaking into hundreds of pieces. No matter how she answered the child’s distress, it would drive a knife through her own breast and paint his father with a black brush.
Ethan spun to the doorway when Mathew crossed the threshold, sparing her the pain of answering his cry.
“Stay. No wanna leave.”
The ache in Abigail’s heart answered the desperation in the boy’s voice. Blinking did nothing to quell the tears welling in her eyes.
“Ethan, come here.” Mathew stood in rigid, unyielding stiffness.
Ethan turned around and grabbed Abigail’s skirt, as she had seen him cling to the hem of his father’s frock coat. He buried his face against her skirt and though the fabric muffled his words, his plea still sounded as a mournful whimper, “No wanna leave.”
“Please, come here, Ethan.” Amazingly, Mathew’s voice softened with the repeated command.
“Go to your father.” The words felt bitter and poisonous in her mouth and as if they shredded her throat. Abigail gently pried Ethan’s fingers from her skirt, then turned him to Mathew.
Ethan looked over his shoulder at her, his face twisted with a crestfallen expression. He dropped his head and shuffled across the floor, dragging his feet as he went.
Mathew’s left hand finally emerged from his pocket, the fingers warped and gnarled as the limbs of an ancient live oak. He scooped Ethan into his arms, but his challenging gaze never left Abigail’s face.
“Stay.” Ethan’s teary voice crawled the distance. He shoved his hands against his father’s shoulder and pushed himself as far from Mathew as he could. “No wanna leave.”
Chapter Six
Mathew didn’t pull his gaze from Abigail, though Ethan’s distress-twisted features filled his peripheral vision. The trembling in his son’s limbs transferred to Mathew and filled his chest. Abigail’s sight lowered to his hand in the middle of Ethan’s back. The revulsion and disgust he expected to see never materialized.
“Mrs. Bailey and I have to go find the preacher...” He hesitated, unable to recall the man’s name. Abigail’s eyes widened as he continued, “...so we can stay.”
“Stay.” Ethan repeated the word with all the stubbornness of a four-year-old determined to have his way.
“Is this what you really want?” Mathew wasn’t sure if he was asking his son, himself, or the woman on the other side of the kitchen. Ethan vigorously nodded. Abigail’s head dipped in the slightest of nods.
“There are some things we will need to settle before we can go find the preacher.” Mathew pulled his sight from Abigail and directed his attention to the boy he held on his hip. “You’ve had cobbler and ice cream but no supper.”
“Not hungry.”
Mathew struggled with the urge to hug the boy tightly to him. Those were words he seldom heard from Ethan. “You might not be, but I am.”
His gaze slid over to Abigail. Renewed color suffused her cheeks. He held her gaze as he bent and lowered Ethan to the floor. What he hoped to be a repentant half-smile crossed his features. �
�I apologize for my thoughtless and needlessly harsh words. I allowed myself to stoop to churlish behavior.”
His apology broke the seeming immobility from Abigail. She gestured to the table. “Please, sit. The roast has been simmering all day. It will just take a few moments to start coffee brewing. Or would you rather have tea?”
“If it’s not too much trouble, I would prefer coffee.”
Ethan tugged incessantly on the hem of his coat. He glanced down at the boy and Ethan pointed across the room. Before he could admonish his son for the rude behavior of pointing, Ethan whispered, “Pretty.”
Mathew snapped his head to Abigail. He gently pushed Ethan’s arm down. “Yes, Ethan, she is a beautiful lady. I’ve told you, though, it’s not polite to point. Please don’t do that again.”
The color drained from her features, she stood motionless for what felt to be a lifetime to Mathew, and then she blinked. She blinked again while she tilted her head to the floor. A flood of rose and pink replaced the lack of color in her cheeks. She took three plates out of the cupboard. After collecting eating utensils from a small drawer under the counter, she set the plates and silverware on the table.
“Is there somewhere I can wash off some of the dust and grime that travel by train seems to perpetuate?” Mathew scratched the stubble on his face. “Or, if I have time before supper and the barber is close—”
“Melody closed her shop up today for the festival.” Abigail audibly swallowed before she gestured to a narrow door he had assumed to be a pantry. “Sam built a shaving room right off the kitchen, there.” Another audible swallow. “You’re welcome to use his razor, soap, and strop. I’ll bring some hot water in for you.”
The pain of her loss shimmered across the room, a pain Mathew knew only too well. “It’s not easy, is it?”
She shook her head, all the while twisting her hands in her skirt. Mathew considered crossing the floor and pulling her into his arms and negated that idea. She didn’t need empty platitudes any more than he had needed them on the train. Still, he murmured, “I’m sorry.”
Another nod of her head, a slight gesture toward the closed door. Her voice sounded thick with unshed tears when she said, “I’ll start heating water for you.”
Ethan stood in the doorway. This wasn’t the first time the child had watched him shave, but it was the first time Ethan came within his vision calmly or willingly for this task. All the times before, Ethan had been near him out of necessity, mostly out of fear when Mathew was out of his sight. Mathew paused his ablutions. On an impulse he picked up the shaving brush and dotted the last of the drying soap to the end of Ethan’s nose. A sound he had never heard rippled from his son—a soft giggle.
Mathew gulped in a breath, struggling with the urge to lift the boy in a crushing hug.
Ethan rubbed the soap from his nose, then wiped his hands together, and lastly down his trouser legs. “I do that?”
“Not for a few years.” He bent to Ethan. He refused to correct the child wiping his hands down his pants’ legs if only because to do so would banish the elusive and rarely seen happiness coloring his son’s expression. “I want you to promise you will never touch this razor. It can cut you. It can hurt.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “No touch.”
“Thank you.” He straightened and met his own reflection in the mirror. Forced to complete what once had been routine with only one hand prolonged the task. He twisted his head, canting his vision hard to the side and removed an area of growth he had missed on the first pass. A dull metallic clank reached him from the kitchen, and a few moments later, the aroma of the supper she had prepared filled the small shaving room. His stomach rumbled, evoking another soft giggle from Ethan.
Mathew lifted the razor to pull it a final time down his throat when he paused. “Did you say the barber’s name is Melody?”
“Yes.” Abigail’s voice drifted from the kitchen. “When her husband left for that blasted war, she took over the business. She’s still the town barber.”
“The advertisement wasn’t exaggerating when it said you lost most of your men.”
“It was my idea to send off for mail-order grooms, but I also argued against letting the whole world know just how vulnerable Brokken was without those men.”
Abigail joined Ethan in the doorway. Mathew dropped the razor into the washbasin and grabbed the collar of his shirt. Thank heavens, he hadn’t draped it over the small chair in the corner of the room, merely dropped the suspenders from his shoulders and shrugged the shirt off so that it hung from his waistband. He hurried to pull the garment up his arms.
If she noticed the withered and mangled remains of his left arm, she didn’t call his attention to it. Instead, she lifted the razor from the still warm water, shook it closed, and extended it to him. “When you’re finished, supper is ready.”
Mathew took the closed straight-edge from her hand and carefully opened it. “I’ll be done here in a minute or two.”
She still hadn’t moved away from the washbasin. Her gaze drifted from his face to the opened throat of his shirt before returning to his face. He found himself unable to move under her scrutiny, and he held his breath, waiting for her to say something. Anything.
Instead, she took the razor from him. Her cool hand tilted his head back, and she pressed the razor to his throat. Mathew let his eyes slide shut and braced himself. The blade slipped smoothly against his skin, and then he heard the razor drop into the washbasin again. He opened his eyes.
The smile lifting her lips raised the temperature in the room.
“I never cared for facial hair before.” Even though her fingertips were cool, they left a smoldering trail in their wake as she traced his jaw to the edge of his carefully trimmed goatee. “This suits you.”
Ethan stepped between them and patted Mathew’s stomach. “Hungry.”
Abigail leaped back as if scalded. Mathew finally tore his gaze from her face. He pulled the closed razor from the soapy water. “I’ll set this out to dry.”
She nodded and backed away. “I’ll finish putting supper on the table. Ethan, will you come into the kitchen and help me?”
Ethan slipped his hand into hers and as much as pulled her from the small room.
Mathew grabbed the edge of the washbasin stand and bent his head. He wasn’t prepared for this. Wasn’t prepared to find himself almost at wit’s end with the overwhelming urge to tell the devil to take the hindmost and make getting an annulment impossible. Wasn’t prepared for emotions he thought long dead and buried with Georgianna to be stirring to demanding life. Wasn’t prepared for Abigail and everything she represented that he thought was lost forever.
He forced himself to stand upright and stared at his reflection in the mirror. This was what he wanted for Ethan, wasn’t it? With each button he closed on his shirt, he listed the reasons this was best for his son. Stability. Safety. Security. In short, a loving home. Everything he had failed to provide for his own son.
Tying his tie took longer than it usually did. He picked up his frock coat and pulled the garment on. With a last tug to straighten it, he left the small room.
Ethan sat at the table while Abigail bustled around the kitchen, setting out the supper she said was ready. She paused long enough to send an encouraging smile in his direction and gestured to the head of the table. “Coffee’s ready. Cream and sugar are on the table. Please, sit down while I get your coffee.”
Mathew pulled the chair out and sank into the seat, staring at the meal spread out before him: a roast surrounded by potatoes, carrots, and onions, a gravy boat nearly overflowing, bread baked to a golden brown, butter, honey, jam...When was the last time he’d had a full meal? While sitting at a table? He was sure Ethan had never seen such a feast.
After Abigail handed him a cup of steaming brew, she sat next to Ethan, and then lowered her head over her folded hands. In the silence that grew, Mathew realized she waited for him to say a prayer. When the words wouldn’t come, she lifted her head
.
“I’m a little out of practice in speaking to the Almighty,” Mathew admitted. “Maybe it would be better if you gave the blessing.”
A soft smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She nodded in understanding and then took one of Ethan’s hands into hers and extended the other to him. Hesitantly, Mathew encircled her fingers, and then clasped Ethan’s small hand. Abigail bowed her head again.
AFTER SUPPER, MATHEW cradled a second cup of coffee and leaned into the tall ladder back of the chair. Roasting coffee beans properly prior to grinding so they could be brewed into the dark liquid was an art Mathew had never become proficient at. Abigail, on the other hand, judging by how quickly he drained his first cup and how easily the second was disappearing, was a master. The faint strains of music entered the kitchen.
“Is there some sort of celebration going on tonight?”
“You missed the street festival that started the day. It’s an annual event, celebrating the founding of Brokken.” She lifted the serving platter from the washbasin, rinsed it, and set it out to dry while she answered him. “There’s a barn dance tonight so all the gentlemen who have arrived can set about wooing the ladies.”
“Would you allow Ethan and me to escort you to that dance?” The question tumbled out his mouth before he fully thought through all the repercussions of such an action.
She spun around, soapsuds clinging to her hands. Her face lit with the smile pulling at her mouth. Then, she sighed and turned her attention to the sink and the dishes. “Only if you would feel comfortable doing so, Dr. Knight.”
Honestly, he wouldn’t, but the smile that graced her features for a brief time goaded him to screw up some courage. No one knew him here. No one knew how desperately he had failed first Georgianna and Ethan and then so many men in that Union prisoner of war camp. He carefully set the cup on the table. “As Ethan and I are staying, perhaps this would be a good manner to meet some of our new neighbors. However, before we all make our appearance, can we agree to be on a first name basis?”