An Inconvenient Marriage

by Christina Miller

  So the girl had a fascination with secrets. Clarissa would have to keep that in mind. “What else did Missus Talbot bring?”

  “Ham, fried chicken and fresh bread. And bread pudding.”

  Clarissa’s grin brought a quizzical look to Emma’s face.

  Emma grabbed the food and candleholder from the floor then stepped inside. “Missus Talbot didn’t bring the apples and cheese.”

  “Then who did?”

  “The old gentleman. The lawyer. He brought them in right before the ceremony, along with potatoes, flour, baking powder and salt. And he put milk and butter in cold storage. He told your grandmother it was everything we need for breakfast—”

  Light footsteps and the sound of a cane thumping on the stairs stopped Emma.

  Grandmother.

  Clarissa thrust the quilt into Emma’s arms and gave her a little push toward the bedroom. “Put it away before she sees it.”

  Another set of footsteps, too heavy for Beau and too fast for Absalom, sounded on the stairs as Emma came back into the hall and Grandmother reached the second floor.

  Grandmother paid them no mind, holding out a key on a tattered red-velvet ribbon. “It’s no big surprise, but Absalom is acting the fool.”

  Clarissa reached for the unfamiliar key. Ornate and oversize, it wouldn’t fit any door in the house that she knew of.

  “That’s the key to the suite. Make sure you use it, because I put your grandfather’s silver communion set in the study. I don’t trust Absalom’s wife any more than I trust him. She’s the kind who will sneak in and steal the stays right out of your corsets.”

  “Why do I need a key to the suite?”

  “There you are,” Samuel interrupted, entering the hall from the stairway. “Emma, I don’t know which was greater, my fear for your life during that wild flight in the runabout, or my anger at Beau.”

  Emma faced her father and glared at him, her jaw tight. “I’ve been in worse danger.”

  Samuel’s shame smoldered in his eyes until he averted his gaze. “I suppose you have. Nonetheless, in the future, please exercise both caution and wisdom where Beau is concerned.”

  “At least this time you weren’t a thousand miles away.” Emma’s bottom lip plumped and stuck out in the hint of a pout.

  He gave an almost inaudible groan. “I was never a thousand miles from you.”

  “You may as well have been. You wanted to be.”

  “Emma Louise, that is not true.”

  The girl stamped her foot. “All you’ve ever wanted was to get away from me—from my mother.”

  The shame in Samuel’s countenance deepened into a level of guilt that drove a spike into Clarissa’s heart. He turned away as if he couldn’t bear the sound of his daughter’s rebuke, the sight of mistrust shimmering in her eyes.

  The same mistrust Clarissa held for her own father.

  An early moonbeam slanted across the floor and stopped at Emma’s feet, seeming to shed light on her pain. Clarissa could feel the girl’s longing for her father’s attention, his approval, his love.

  And her complete inability to make him see it.

  Clarissa certainly understood this kind of heartache, since she felt it every day, each time she thought of the men who’d failed her. Now her stepdaughter’s guarded expression made Clarissa reexamine her own shielded heart.

  How could she help Emma when she couldn’t change her own feelings toward her father?

  Lord, I’m either the most qualified person to help Emma—or the least. I’m not sure which.

  * * *

  Samuel turned his now-pounding head from the sympathetic gazes of Clarissa and Missus Adams. Would he ever convince Emma of his desperate love for her? Her dainty finger had touched a shard of truth, and that hurt as much as her rejection. He had wished to be a thousand miles from Emma’s mother—in exactly those words—after her betrayal of him at the presbytery reception. Apparently he’d failed even in keeping that fact from his daughter.

  The thought made him want to run, to head back to the army, to hide himself in some distant place where no one had ever heard of him or his failure.

  Or the Fighting Chaplain nonsense.

  But he’d done that once, had run off to “serve the Lord and the Confederacy,” although even the War couldn’t take him a thousand miles away. In the agony of his late wife’s ultimate treachery, he’d compromised his convictions, and he’d regretted it every day since.

  He’d not make that mistake, commit that sin, again.

  “Emma, dear, it’s been a long day, and you’re overtired.” Clarissa’s soothing voice broke through his musing and somehow comforted him. Although it was surely a false comfort. She’d overlooked Emma’s harsh words to ease the tension, to console his daughter, not because she thought he was innocent of the sin Emma had uncovered.

  And yet he couldn’t quite stop the echo of her sweet voice that still rang softly in his mind...

  He looked up to see his new wife brushing her fingertips over Emma’s windblown hair, drawing her close and murmuring in her ear. The sight brought a mistiness to his eyes and he blinked it away. When had Emma had a motherly caress such as this? He’d certainly never seen Veronica showing love to her as Clarissa did now.

  “Regardless of all that,” Missus Adams said in her no-nonsense tone, “we all must eat and sleep tonight. I’m not sure what calamity my grandson has caused now, but I saw him storm out of the dining room and the back door.”

  “Absalom is angry because I told him to control his stepson and his wife—what’s her name again?” Samuel asked, glad for the diversion.

  “She insisted I call her Miss Drusilla. You can imagine the turn of that conversation.”

  Samuel surely could. “Drusilla has already chosen rooms for them and is unpacking as we speak.”

  “Which rooms?” Clarissa cast her lovely hazel eyes, a deep green now in the dim light, about the hall and its four bedroom doors.

  “She and Absalom are taking a ground-level suite in the west wing, and Beau the room above them.”

  Clarissa dashed to the back gallery door. “Grandmother, she’s in your rooms—”

  “Let her have them. I’ll stay in this part of the house. If I must sleep under the same roof as Absalom, I’ll at least be in a separate wing. Perhaps then he won’t murder me in my bed.”

  Under different circumstances, Samuel might have laughed at Missus Adams’s acid tongue. It reminded him much of his grandfather’s.

  The downstairs case clock chimed the hour before he could formulate a reply. Clarissa consulted the timepiece pinned to the front of her dress. “Nine o’clock. May I suggest we all help ourselves to a cold supper in the kitchen and then retire?”

  The thought of food turned Samuel’s stomach. If only he could skip the meal and withdraw now, to a place of calm and quiet...

  “I doubt any of us has much of an appetite. I’m going straight to my room.” Clarissa’s grandmother laid her hand on her flat stomach as if calming it. “Your parents’ room.”

  “I was thinking of putting Emma there. If you take that one, where should she sleep?”

  “In your room.”

  “But—”

  “She’s taken a liking to you. She’ll feel more comfortable staying in the room where you slept as a child.”

  “But where will I—?”

  “I want the reverend to have use of your grandfather’s study, so you and he will take the second-story suite.” Missus Adams lowered her voice and spoke in gentle tones that held none of her usual harshness and reminded Samuel of Clarissa. “Where my Hezekiah and I started out.”

  A suite. Two rooms, bedroom and study. He nodded his thanks to Missus Adams.

  The two women bustled about, gathering linens and who-knew-what to make Emma comfortable in her new home. Samuel headed for th
e rooms Clarissa directed him toward.

  Alone. As he should be. As he always would be.

  As he deserved.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, Samuel stirred the embers in the study fireplace at the church, the coals mirroring the sunrise outside the window but not the dreariness in his heart. A cheery fire on a damp winter day usually spawned in him a prayer of gratitude. But today it made him feel lonelier than ever. What good was a comforting fire when he had no one to share it with?

  And what had caused his uncharacteristic bout of melancholy? He’d spent his adult life without the love of a woman, so why should today be worse than any other day? He had much to thank the Lord for. Yesterday he’d been alone with a daughter who’d seemed unable to tolerate his presence. Today he had a beautiful wife who had formed an immediate bond with his daughter and seemed both capable and willing to be a mother to Emma. Perhaps more of a mother than Veronica ever had been.

  So why could he not curb his foul mood?

  It must have been the hard daybed in his study at Camellia Pointe. Or the fact he’d gone to sleep hungry and thirsty—and still was this morning. Or perhaps the river air didn’t agree with him.

  Whatever the cause, Samuel would take the matter to prayer. If continual musing over his situation could change it, that would have happened an hour ago when he’d first arrived at church.

  He looked about the study for a spot to designate as his prayer closet, his secret place of prayer. Upon finding a tiny room with a few shelves of hymnals, Bibles and commentaries, he entered and shut the door.

  Dropping to his knees, he began his custom of praying aloud, the sound of his own voice keeping him focused and free from woolgathering. As soon as he’d mentioned his new wife’s name to the Lord, her voice called to him from the study.

  “Samuel, are you here?”

  He hastened to his feet and stepped out of the closet. “I’m surprised to see you so early. I was going to bring my phaeton for you, your grandmother and Emma later.”

  “I drove in alone. Grandmother’s cousin-in-law Ophelia Adams loaned me her little one-seat runabout while she visited at Camellia Pointe this morning.” The corners of her mouth turned up the tiniest bit, as if she was holding back a smile as she doffed her pale green shawl. “You were—in the closet with the door shut?”

  Samuel’s face flushed hot in the chilly room. “I understand how I might look silly. Jesus said when we pray, we should go into the closet and shut the door.” The trace of a smile lingered on her lips, and it brought a grin of his own. “I took Him literally.”

  Clarissa’s eyes twinkled as her smile spread across her face. She was even more beautiful this morning, standing before the window in the tentative early morning light, the dim rays bringing a hint of a shine to her dark hair. The sprinkling of green leaves in the fabric of her white dress turned her hazel eyes to a near-emerald shade, and her gentle smile tugged at Samuel’s heart. Her gold-colored pendant, decorated with a purple stone, caught his attention as it rested against her porcelain skin.

  At last, he noticed a covered pail and basket in her hands. She set them on the desk and removed her dark gloves, then pulled out plates, a cup and a leather-bound book marked with a dark green ribbon. “I brought breakfast for us. I’ve heard soldiers like their coffee strong, so I added extra grounds to the pot for you.”

  The robust aroma of coffee wafted toward him and lifted a bit of the gloom from the room. How long had it been since a woman had prepared food or drink just for him? For Clarissa to serve him this way—the thought stole his breath for a moment.

  Then Samuel realized he was alone with his new wife. If he’d lost his breath a moment ago, he now sensed his pulse betraying him, racing like sniper fire. How was he to act with her? He’d never figured that out with Veronica, had never been able to please her in all their years of marriage.

  And now duty dictated he try again.

  Could he do it? He and Veronica had had separate interests, separate lives, and eventually, separate rooms. Perhaps he and Clarissa should maintain that kind of marriage too.

  Except that he remembered how unfulfilling that had been...

  Clarissa lifted the lid from the pail, took a dipper from the basket and filled his cup. Then she set the pail on the cast-iron trivet on the brick hearth, where it would stay warm. She moved closer, handing him a napkin and the cup, and another, sweeter scent mixed with the coffee’s bite. A flower fragrance, light and delicate, drifting from her hair.

  He drew another whiff then stopped himself. What was he thinking, enjoying her perfume that way? He stepped back, sloshing his drink onto the floor and his boots.

  Before he realized what she was doing, Clarissa stooped down with her napkin, cleaning the spill from the leather of his boots and then from the cypress boards. The distracting fragrance hit him again.

  “I’m a clumsy oaf. Let me clean it up.” Samuel bent on one knee and attempted to take the cloth from her, but before he could manage the exchange, she finished her wiping and stood again.

  “No need. It was only a few drops.”

  He scrambled up and reached for the napkin, but she was already tucking it into a corner of the basket.

  When Clarissa had made them each a ham and cheese sandwich with the provisions she’d brought, she cut the sandwiches in two, then took a seat in the straight-backed chair across the desk. Far enough away that he missed her flowery scent. Then was glad he could no longer smell it.

  After his word of prayer, which calmed his racing heart somewhat, she opened her book to the page where the strip of green lay. She ran her finger along a list. “Early this morning, I jotted down a few things I thought might help you in your first days at Christ Church.”

  Help him? The thought gave enough comfort that food appealed to him again, and his stomach rumbled. He glanced down at the plates Clarissa had prepared. The bread was nicely browned and his sandwich fat with generous amounts of ham and cheese. Exactly as he liked it.

  Samuel forced his gaze from his plate and waited for his wife to take the first bite. If she didn’t do it soon, he’d be sorely tempted to start anyway, despite Clarissa’s strict Natchez manners. He took a long swig of his coffee instead.

  Its overwhelming strength and bitterness made his eyes bulge. When he’d managed to get it down, he couldn’t stop the cough that exploded from his assaulted throat. Army camp coffee was milk compared to this concoction. It was a wonder it hadn’t eaten holes in her tin pail.

  Was this how they drank coffee in Natchez? If so, he’d be in trouble at pastoral calls and church socials. But wait, she’d said she made it strong for him, obviously thinking he’d like it that way. He cleared his throat. “Are you having coffee this morning?”

  She kept her focus on her book. “I prefer mine quite weak, so I took a cup at home. I made this pail especially for you.”

  For him? The whole pail?

  He couldn’t possibly drink a whole quart of that kerosene coffee. He opened his mouth to say so but, of a sudden, something nudged his heart—quiet, gentle—the way the Lord often warned Samuel he was about to make a fool of himself. Apparently, He understood something about this situation that Samuel did not.

  He closed his mouth. Then what do I do, Lord?

  When no clear answer came, he assumed he was to drink it. Breathing a prayer for his health, he held his breath and emptied the cup. As he set it down, his stomach roiled. If he didn’t get some food in it fast, that coffee would do more damage than a minié ball to the gut.

  He laid his hand over his abdomen. Gut shot—by his own sweet wife’s coffee.

  At the sound of the cup hitting the desk, Clarissa looked up from her list. Seeing the empty vessel, she flashed him a warm smile that made her eyes gleam.

  And Samuel understood why he’d had to drink that coffee. She was trying to be a good w
ife on the first morning of their marriage. He took in the pretty curve of her cheek, her delicate brows and lashes, the innocent set of her lips. Refusing her attempt at pleasing him this morning would have crushed her. It was far too soon for him to make a mistake like that. He’d have to drink her coffee every time she made it for him. And as for his stomach—well, if God was leading Samuel to drink the stuff, it would be up to Him to keep it from killing him.

  However, he knew better than to hope this could mean they’d be happy in the future. Even Veronica had tried—a little—in the beginning.

  Clarissa pushed the book to his side of the desk. “I’ve written down the church’s regular meeting schedules, community activities, names and addresses of the deaconate—details like that.”

  She finally took a bite of her sandwich.

  At last, he bit into his, its good salt-rising bread and salty ham, the smooth cheese...

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway and drew nearer. “Did I hear someone mention the deacons?”

  The severe tone of the man’s voice brought Samuel’s gaze up. The skeletal deacon he’d met yesterday—was it Bradford? Bradley?—stuck his balding head inside the door, the other two deacons behind him.

  As Samuel hastened to finish his bite of sandwich, Clarissa smiled her encouragement to him. The three men, clothed with every bit of their dignity, filed into the study and all but circled the desk.

  “I don’t understand why you’re still here,” the bony one said.

  Finally able to speak, Samuel stood and faced his tormentors. “I’ve had a change of circumstances, Deacon...”

  “Bradley.”

  “Deacon Bradley. I’m happy to report I’m now married.” And it was true—he was happy to report their nuptials because it meant he could stay at Christ Church. Being happily married was a different story altogether.

  “You’re married? To whom?” The ample-bellied deacon’s astonishment showed in both his tone and his wide eyes.

  “To me, Deacon Morris.” Clarissa waved her left hand, displaying her wedding ring. “The Reverend Gifford married us at Camellia Pointe before he left town last night.”