The Devil You Know

by Jo Goodman

  He stared at Willa, watching her mouth, waiting for her lips to move around the words she would use to take it back. There were no words, though. Her lips did not so much as twitch.

  Israel spoke because he decided one of them had to and it seemed the onus was on him at the moment. “Are you certain you don’t want me to kill him?” He dodged the tumbler she threw at his head, but then she picked up the glass and droplets of whiskey splattered his shoulder as it sailed past his ear. He threw up both hands to defend himself even though she had no more weapons within easy reach. “All right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I misjudged your sincerity.”

  “Misjudged my sincerity,” she muttered, glaring at him. “And stop laughing.”

  He knew he wasn’t laughing. The opposite was true. He’d purposely set his mouth in a flat line to smother any hint of amusement, and his jaw ached because he was holding it so tightly. His breathing was controlled, steady and even, and he did not look away once. He was presenting her with his soberest look, and she was accusing him of . . . well, perhaps it was only his mostly sober look because his shoulders were starting to shake.

  He sucked in a deep breath and fought to hold it.

  “Go on,” Willa said, resigned to the inevitable. “Just let it go.”

  Oddly enough, her words had the opposite effect. The pressure in his lungs eased and the urge to laugh went with it. He was able to find the gravity of the situation that had eluded him before.

  “I apologize,” he said. “I should not have . . .” He shook his head, and for the second time that day, words failed him. “I apologize.”

  Willa studied him for a long time. Finally she nodded.

  Israel said, “I realize I am about to state the obvious, but it still needs to be said. You don’t know me, Willa. It begins and ends there. It is hard for me to imagine that you are so desperate, so lacking in choices, that you see no alternative except to make a proposal.” He pointed to himself. “And to put that offer to me? You’d make a better match with Zach. You like him.”

  “I asked him. He said no.”

  That effectively shut Israel’s mouth.

  “That’s right. I asked, he said no, and I sent him to the bunkhouse to get you.”

  “Zach didn’t mention that I was your second choice.”

  Willa’s jaw slid sideways as she regarded him unbelievingly. “Are you really going to pretend that you’re wounded? You laughed at me, and you’ve been furiously trying to think of a way to say no that will end this. Well, you did, and it’s ended. I won’t ask again. I believe the feeling you’re groping for is relief.”

  Israel waited a few moments to be sure Willa was not going to come out of her chair or at the very least, order him to the bunkhouse to send Cutter back. Before she looked away, he caught and held her gaze. There was a glittering sheen in her dark eyes that reflected the lantern light, but he had no way of being certain what provoked her tears. Frustration with him? Disappointment in him? Regret that she had posed her question?

  So she would be sure to hear him, or more important, so she would be sure to listen, he spoke quietly, gravely. “I did not say no.” He waited then for his words to have impact. The change in her features was subtle, but whatever she had been expressing before was being replaced by uncertainty. A small vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows as they pulled together. Her mouth parted just enough for her to suck in the lower lip. She worried it with her teeth. A flush crept up from her collar and spread slowly across her face, and her nostrils pinched slightly as she breathed deeply through her nose.

  “You did not say yes.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t. But what’s important here, at least as I see it, is not to get ahead of ourselves.”

  Willa continued to regard him warily, but she did nod.

  Israel took a breath and released it slowly. “The order of events here is that a very short time ago Zach returned from Jupiter and related a conversation with Eli Barber that alarmed you.”

  “Concerned,” she said. “I was concerned.”

  “Uh-huh. Seems that it raised every one of your hackles, but if you want to characterize it as concern, I’ll accept that.”

  “You’re laughing at me again.”

  Dead calm, he said, “No, I’m not.”

  She was quiet, thoughtful, and then, “I do not know how to take you sometimes.”

  “I understand. And that speaks to my earlier point that you don’t know me. That’s something you need to consider carefully. I was trying to say that there hasn’t been much time between when Zach spoke to you and when you put your proposal to me. ‘Hasty’ is one word that comes to mind. ‘Impulsive’ is another.”

  “You probably have a lot of words at the ready, you being a writer and all.”

  The absolute aridness with which she spoke made him grin. “Well done. You see how you can poke at me and I don’t take offense?”

  “I don’t know why not. I was trying to offend you.”

  That merely broadened his grin. He watched her eyes drop to the dimpled corner.

  Willa dragged her eyes away from his mouth. “Can you be offended?”

  “Mr. Roundbottom,” he said. “That stung.”

  “Of course. You think a lot of your good looks. That was a poke at your vanity.”

  He shrugged carelessly and cocked an eyebrow at her. “My Achilles’ heel.”

  Willa slumped back in her chair and shook her head. Laughter bubbled. “Do you recall what you said about me making a better match with Zach?”

  “Because you like him. I remember.”

  “Mm-hmm. Well, I suppose you should know that I don’t dislike you.”

  “Ah. You don’t dislike me. That’s a tad left-handed, don’t you think?”

  “I prefer cautious. You’ve warned me about hasty judgments.”

  “So I did.” Israel knuckled his jaw. “Do you need my answer now, Willa? If I say no, will you ask for Cutter? If I say yes, will you have a preacher here in the morning?”

  “No,” she said. “No to both those things.”

  “Then there’s still time to think this through. For both of us. You might decide that turning down Eli Barber’s regular proposals is preferable to marrying me. I might decide it’s better to move on than put you and your family in danger.”

  She stared at him but said nothing.

  “Well? I have to tell you, I’m not used to being the sensible one in the room. I don’t know if I can hold out. I wanted to kiss you real bad a little while ago.”

  “That’s as good a reason as any to wait.”

  Israel’s mouth quirked to one side. “That’s not flattering.”

  She ignored that. “You’re right. There are things I haven’t thought through.” She held up a finger as one of them occurred to her. “Are you married?”

  Apparently he did not answer quickly enough to suit because he heard the tattoo of her boot against the floor.

  “It’s yes or no,” she said with a touch of impatience.

  “It’s not.” In any other circumstance, he might have been flattered when her face fell, but he reminded himself that Willa was not necessarily eager to marry him, she was eager to be done with Eli Barber.

  “It’s not?” Puzzlement defined her features, and she stopped tapping her boot. “Oh. I see. Of course. You’re engaged.”

  With careful attention to his intonation, Israel said, “No, you don’t see. The short answer to your question is I don’t know. The longer version is that I was not married—or engaged—when I was walking along Wabash. What happened between Wabash Avenue and Pancake Valley still isn’t clear. I have no reason to believe I got married on the journey, but you need to know that I’ve wondered now and again if avoiding marriage is what got me into trouble. I’m leaning toward that being unlikely, not because I am man of good character,
but because not that many days passed between the last thing I remember in Chicago and showing up here.”

  Willa rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. She closed her eyes briefly. “That’s a lot to consider.”

  “It is.”

  “I’ve been foolish,” she said.

  “I don’t think that.”

  She snorted lightly. “Then you’re too kind or you’re a liar.”

  “If you have to choose, choose the latter.”

  Her head lifted and she stared at him, frowning. “Do you mean that? Are you a liar?”

  “I do mean it. And yes, I am. Frequently.”

  “But—”

  “But I was not lying when I said that. You are perhaps the least foolish woman of my acquaintance, and I know that because I have a tendency to seek foolish women out. I didn’t find you. You found me, and I still don’t know what accounts for the attraction.”

  “I never said I was attracted to you.”

  He gave her an arch look, one eyebrow lifted, his mouth similarly slanted. “I was talking about what attracts me to you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mm-hmm. Oh. And there is another thing I think you should know.” She did not flush, he noticed, no pink blossoms in her cheeks this time. She went white. He was afraid it confirmed something he had begun to suspect about her proposal. “I am attracted to you, Willa, and if you have some idea that I would marry you under any conditions that do not include consummation, then there is no reason for us to continue this conversation.”

  She smiled a shade weakly. “Yes, of course. Consummation.”

  He did not take that as agreement. Israel believed she was only repeating the word, testing the taste of it on her tongue. He had the sense that she found it bitter. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

  Willa nodded. “I understand.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking that it would have to be a real marriage. I mean it would be real in the sense that we would be married by law, but in—”

  “But not in the eyes of God?”

  “God? How can you speak of the eyes of God when you just finished telling me that you’re a liar?”

  “I’m not sure what one has to do with the other,” he said. “Do you think I don’t know He’s watching? Judging?”

  “It seems to me that you brought up the Lord’s name to make a point in your favor, not because you are a Godly man.”

  “And you would be right, but I am the son of a minister so it comes fairly easily to me. For instance, ‘A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.’ That’s from the book of Genesis, chapter two, verse twenty-four.”

  Her lips parted but she had no words.

  “I know,” he said. “It astonishes me sometimes. That was not a verse the good reverend insisted that I learn. As a very young man, the idea of one flesh was intriguing.” He shrugged. “So I learned what I could about it.”

  Willa made a strangled sound at the back of her throat.

  “Are you all right?” Israel asked. She threw out an arm to stop him when he was moved to clap her on the back. He waited for her to catch her breath and relax before he said, “Here is another one. From Proverbs. ‘It is better to live in the corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.’”

  “Hmm. I don’t know about a corner in this housetop, but there’s always a bunk for you across the way.”

  He laughed. “Good to know.” He stood, stepped carefully around the glass and tumbler, neither of which had shattered when Willa threw them, and reached for his coat and hat. He started to put them on, stopped, and then came back to the table, this time passing up the chair where he had been sitting and going to Willa’s side instead. When she turned, her knee brushed his leg, and with only a hairsbreadth distance between them, she was forced to tip her head back to look at him.

  Israel dropped his hat and coat on the table. His hand continued its sweep toward Willa, glancing off her shoulder first, then the nape of her neck. His fingers curled around the loose braid that mostly confined her dark hair. It was as fine and silky as he thought it would be, and for the first time since he’d begun working for her, he was glad that his palms were not thick with calluses.

  He applied very little pressure, but the tug was telling, and as it turned out, it was enough. She came to her feet of her own volition, and regarded him warily but unafraid. She never once looked away. Neither was she issuing a challenge. She seemed to be . . . what? he wondered. Then it came to him. She was waiting. Quietly.

  He smiled. Her eyes dropped to his dimple, and that was when he kissed her.

  Chapter Nine

  Willa watched him closely over the next week and then only slightly less closely the week after that. She did not have a clear idea what she expected from him, but it was not indifference. She made it impossible for him to ignore her because she directed his work, and if he ever wondered if she was punishing him for that kiss with the hard, physical labor she assigned him, he did not call her on it. Sometimes she wished he would, not because it was true—it wasn’t—but because it would have demonstrated that he was dissatisfied with mucking and digging and repairing. All of the work he did was necessary, so that was not an argument he could make, but he could have asked for work that would have challenged him and improved his skills, made him more valuable to the operation of the spread.

  Israel had once claimed to be shiftless, but that was proof that he was a liar. He worked hard and he worked long. He followed directions, he rarely drank, and as far as she knew, he never played cards with anyone except Annalea.

  He also had not shown the least interest in repeating that kiss.

  Willa was not sure if she was disappointed, insulted, or relieved. There were moments that each of those emotions was keenly felt and times when it seemed to her that she felt them all at once.

  As for Israel being uninterested in a second kiss, Willa accepted responsibility. She had not yet happened upon the right time to explain this to him, and the words that would fill out the explanation still had not presented themselves in any coherent fashion. She was aware that she occasionally avoided him because she feared she would simply blurt out that the fault was hers, that she had not been ready, and that perhaps she never would be.

  Every time this last thought tumbled through her mind, and it came at her with alarming frequency, she recommitted to silence.

  “I should have slapped him,” she told Felicity, holding out a dried apple slice in the palm of her hand. “Or ground my boot heel into his toes. Either would have been clear enough, don’t you think? I could have done both. The boot heel during and the slapping afterward.”

  Felicity set her nose against Willa’s shoulder, nuzzling for more treats when Willa’s hand dropped away.

  Willa absently reached into her pocket for another apple slice and came up empty. “Sorry, girl. No more.” Felicity pushed her shoulder again. “No.” Willa placed her hands on either side of Felicity’s nose and steadied her. “I said no.”

  Felicity responded to the pressure of Willa’s hands and the firmness of her voice and took a few steps backward. Willa picked up the brush lying on the bench beside the stall and began grooming the mare. Felicity nickered softly and Willa patted her neck. “I didn’t say no to him, did I? And you know what? I didn’t want to.” That was her secret, her shame. She only wanted to grind her boot into his foot or slap his face because she hadn’t said no.

  Willa’s long brush strokes slowed and then stopped. Her hand rested on Felicity’s flank. She had an urge to lean into the mare, and she gave in to it because standing alone had nothing to recommend it at the moment. She laid her forehead against the animal’s neck and closed her eyes and breathed. The air was cool and pungent with odors that were familiar and so
mehow calming. There was Felicity’s scent, tangy and humid, and it mingled with the smell of hay, leather tack, dust, manure, and weathered wood.

  From just inside the doorway, Israel watched Willa. He had not expected to find her in the barn. He was under the impression that she had already ridden out when Zach sent him over. He was supposed to cut a few different lengths of rope and bring them to the bunkhouse, where he was finally going to get his first lasso-throwing lesson. He had been hinting around for weeks that he wanted to learn, but it wasn’t until bitterly cold weather drove Zach indoors that there was time and opportunity for tutoring.

  Now here was Willa. Willa, who had done a fair job of late creating a fence with more barbs than barbed wire. To stay or go was the question here, a question, Israel decided, that differed from the one that occupied Hamlet—but only in the matter of scale. Hamlet, though, had Shakespeare composing his soliloquy. The best Israel could manage at the moment was to clear his throat.

  Willa spun around, clutching the grooming brush in front of her.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I wanted you to know I was here.”

  She nodded shortly.

  Israel slid the rolling barn door closed, shutting out the harsh afternoon sunlight that had thrown his figure into dark relief.

  It occurred to him that, before he shut the door, he should have asked her if she wanted him to leave. Her silence made the situation increasingly awkward, at least for him. He could not read her features, and the lack of expression was troubling.

  “Why are you here?” she asked at last.

  Israel did not think she sounded particularly interested. The question was posed as a matter of course, not curiosity. “I thought you’d left the door open when you rode out.”

  “But I haven’t ridden out.”

  “I see that now.”

  She turned her back and reached for Felicity’s bridle. “It’s just as well that you’re here. I wanted to speak with you.”

  The fact that she was not looking at him was telling. He considered approaching, considered offering to help, even considered taking the bridle out of her hands and wrapping her up with it, but he did none of those things. He stood his ground and kept his gaze steady on the back of her head.