Open Country

by Warner, Kaki

  At the top of the staircase, Jessica turned right along the mezzanine. On one side, it overlooked the main room, and on the other, it was lined with several doors. She explained that this section was hers and Brady’s area, and it consisted of a master suite and water closet at one end of the hall, with a small adjoining bedroom that had been converted into an infant room, and at the opposite end, a linen pantry and two small bedrooms separated by another water closet.

  “This is Hank’s section,” she said as they continued through the archway into the east wing of the house. “The west wing is Jack’s.”

  “The missing brother?”

  Jessica frowned and shook her head. “He’s not missing. He’s simply busy. I’m sure he will find his way home soon. There are four bedrooms in this wing,” she went on briskly. “These two”—she pointed to two doors on the right—“have their own dressing rooms and share a water closet. Penny and Charlie can sleep there unless you’d prefer they stay in the children’s nursery upstairs.”

  She must have seen Molly’s surprise. “I know. It does seem rather too grand for a ranch house . . . three sprawling stories. But I do so love having the family together under one roof rather than spread out in several smaller houses. That’s the way Bickersham Hall is laid out—that’s my home in England—and I wanted the same here, so we converted the attic into a nursery. Family is so important, don’t you think? And what could be lovelier than a house full of life and laughter? Especially,” she added with an impish smile, “if the children’s rooms are on another floor entirely.”

  “Your children don’t stay with you?” Jessica was such a mother hen, Molly couldn’t imagine her being separated from her children for long.

  As they passed a hall table, Jessica swept her hand across the top then checked her fingers for dust. Apparently she found none.

  “They stay in the room next to ours,” she went on, “until they are able to sleep through the night. Abigail moved upstairs about a month ago. I still sleep fitfully, expecting to hear her awaken, but I’m doing better.”

  Pausing to straighten a lovely floral watercolor, she sent Molly a rueful smile. “However, she is doing beautifully, which is a bit lowering, I must say. One would think she would be sad to leave her mum, but alas, not.”

  “The children sleep on the top floor?”

  Jessica chuckled. “Not alone, I assure you. Ben is entirely too wild to be unsupervised, even at night.” Bending, she picked up a gingham doll and set it on a hall chair. “There is a large dormitory-style sleeping area, a water closet adjoining a suite for the Garcia sisters, Lupe and Maria, who look after the children, and also a play area with books, art supplies, a piano, some horrid tom-tom drums Brady bought, and entirely too many toys. I’m sure Ben and Abigail would love having Penny and Charlie stay up there with them.”

  Molly wasn’t certain she wanted them that far away, especially in a strange house with people they scarcely knew. Charlie was still having nightmares, and she felt she should be near if he awoke. “I’ll check with them, then we can decide.”

  As they continued through Hank’s wing, Jessica nodded to a door on the left. “That bedroom also has its own dressing room, although it shares a bath and water closet with the master bedroom. And this,” she said, pushing open the double doors at the end of the hall, “is the master bedroom for this wing.” Stepping back so Molly could precede her into the room, she added with a smile, “It’s one of my favorites.”

  Molly could see why. It was a lovely corner room, full of sunlight. The colors were muted and calming, pale yellows and beiges with soft pastel blue touches in the rug on the polished floor, and on the quilt atop the oversized bed, and in the woven tiebacks on the pale beige drapes. On one side of the bed, a French door opened onto a balcony. On the other exterior wall stood a rock fireplace bracketed by bookcases and two large windows. On the wall to the left of the door, a wardrobe and bureau framed the doorway into the dressing area and bath. The room was a subtle blend of the masculine and feminine—the log walls adorned with pastoral paintings, the upholstered wingback chairs dressed up with ruffled pillows and lace doilies, the wood floor softened by a thick rug in a subtle floral design.

  “It’s beautiful,” Molly said. She looked around, trying to picture Hank in this luxurious room. The bed would certainly accommodate his height, but the ruffled pillows seemed unlike him. In fact, she saw little of Hank in the room—no knickknacks, no books waiting on the nightstand, no boots by the bed—nothing to indicate a man resided here. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but certainly not this restrained elegance with its soft feminine touches. “It’s a very comfortable room.”

  Jessica looked pleased. She moved silently through the room, her hands reaching out to touch this, straighten that. “I’m glad you like it.”

  Molly noticed atop the fireplace mantle the scattered remnants of what had once been an ornate shelf clock. “Is that an Ormolu clock?” she asked.

  “It was.” Jessica came to stand beside her. “Until Hank tinkered with it.” She sighed and shook her head. “The man has an insatiable curiosity about how things work and will dismantle anything he can get his hands on. I suggest you keep an eye on your belongings.” Moving toward the French doors beside the bed, Jessica stared past the balcony to the hilltop cemetery and the mountains rising beyond it. “Some people might find a view of a graveyard off-putting, but I . . . I find it comforting.” A momentary sadness crossed her face. Then with a determined smile, she turned and said, “I furnished this room as the master suite, but Hank thought it too grand for him, so he took the smaller room that adjoins the bath.”

  “So no one uses this lovely room?”

  “I hope you will. I thought under the circumstances, you might prefer your own room.”

  “Under what circumstances?” a deep voice asked.

  Startled, Molly looked over to see Hank in the doorway, her traveling case under his good arm, his saddlebags thrown over his shoulder.

  “There you are.” Jessica crossed to the wardrobe. “Put Molly’s things in here, Hank. She can sort through them after her bath.” Turning to Molly, she asked, “Shall I show you how the bath works? It’s quite ingenious, I assure you. Hank designed it himself. He has such a talent for building and fixing things.” Her smile clearly showed the pride and affection she felt for her brother-in-law.

  “I’ll show her,” Hank said, still standing in the doorway.

  “Then I shall attend to supper.” Jessica crossed the room, speaking as she went. “Dress warmly. Log houses can be quite drafty this time of year. If you want, I can send Penny and Charlie down, although I daresay they’re having a lovely time up there with all the toys and games.” When Molly said to let them play until supper, Jessica nodded and slipped past Hank into the hall. “Enjoy your bath,” she called with a wave of her hand.

  As Jessica’s footfalls faded, Molly glanced at Hank, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she motioned toward the connecting door. “You were going to show me how the plumbing works?”

  “Right.” After he dumped her traveling case by the wardrobe, he led her through the dressing area into a large tiled room dominated by an outsized wooden tub. Two cast iron pipes emptied into it, while more pipes ran along the ceiling to a sink mounted on the far wall, with drainpipes running through the floor. Behind a screen stood a fixed toilet stool with a flush tank on the wall above it. It was the most modern water closet Molly had ever seen.

  He turned one of the faucets over the tub. “This is hot water. It’s really hot, so be careful.” Steam burped out, then a trickle of water. “Cold is on the right.” He put a wooden stopper in the drain hole in the bottom of the tub then straightened. “It’s not as dangerous as it looks, no matter what Brady says.”

  Molly watched in alarm as the pipes knocked and wobbled, then the trickle of water became a gushing stream. Several of the hospitals where she and Papa had worked had boasted their own steam rooms, but to have such a
luxury in one’s home was almost decadent. “You did this yourself?” she asked over the noise of the pipes.

  “It’s not that complicated. A boiler in the basement heats water into steam until it creates enough pressure to force hot water up through these cast iron pipes. Nothing new about that.”

  Molly thought of Nellie’s first husband, who had perished, along with over a thousand others, when his steamship blew up. “Couldn’t it explode?”

  Hank answered with a shrug. “That’s why we only fire it up twice a day. We also make regular checks to be sure there’s water in the boiler and the pop valves that release steam are working. It’s probably safer than carrying buckets of scalding water up the stairs every time you want a bath. Considering what circumstances?”

  Startled by the change in subject, she looked up to find him studying her with that sharply assessing look. She sensed that with the return of most of his memory, he was fretting over the gaps where she and the children should be. He was an intelligent man. It wouldn’t be long before he figured out there was more going on here than just minor lapses of memory. For the umpteenth time, she regretted allowing Brady to talk her into keeping the truth of their marriage a secret from Hank.

  His frown deepened. “Jessica said considering the circumstances, she thought you would want your own room. What did she mean?”

  Molly felt heat inch up her neck and wondered how to answer that without further arousing his suspicions. “Well, there’s your arm to consider,” she said in her nurse’s voice. “Even though it’s splinted, it’s still quite vulnerable until I put a hard plaster cast on it.” When he gave no response, she hurried to fill the lengthening silence. “And then there’s the fact that you don’t remember me. That I’m a stranger to you. More or less.”

  He continued to watch her, as if expecting her to say more.

  The man had the strangest way of controlling a conversation without saying a word, using silence to compel one to speak while he said nothing. It was a bit unnerving, although normally such a thing wouldn’t bother her. She wasn’t that talkative herself and preferred to observe rather than participate in conversations. But with Hank she often found herself rambling on like a nervous schoolgirl, which was quite out of character for her. “Perhaps she thought, in view of that, it would be awkward if we were to share, er, private quarters,” she offered lamely.

  He studied her for such a long time Molly was forced to look away.

  “You’re afraid of me,” he finally said. “Why?”

  Her gaze darted to his.

  “Have I given you reason?” he persisted.

  “No,” she said quickly, which was the truth. It wasn’t Hank she feared so much as the idea of him, of a husband. She never thought she would be married, and now that suddenly she was—and to a stranger—well, it took some getting used to.

  “Then what’s wrong, Molly? What’s really going on?”

  Realizing she had clenched her hands, she straightened her fingers and pressed them against her skirts. “Nothing’s going on. But we haven’t known each other for long, and now you don’t even remember me. It’s awkward.”

  “Hell,” he muttered. “You want to me to court you again, don’t you?”

  Actually, that wasn’t what she’d been thinking at all. She had never been courted—proposals from dying men hardly counted—and she’d long reconciled herself to it never happening. But now that he mentioned it . . .

  “Would that be so bad?” she asked, warming to the idea.

  “Courting?”

  “For how long?” he asked with such a put-upon look she almost laughed.

  Had he truly expected her to simply toss up her skirts, even though they didn’t even know each other? Didn’t he need at least a hint of an emotional attachment before he took a woman to bed? Or perhaps any woman would suffice as long as she had the correct anatomical accommodations. Honestly. Men were so . . . basic.

  “Two days ago you were at death’s door,” she reminded him. “You should heal a bit before you exert yourself.”

  “I don’t have to exert myself. There are ways—”

  “Be that as it may,” she cut in, horrified that he was about to give her instructions on how to service him, “you should at least know who I am before we”—she cleared her throat—“that is to say, you . . . assert your husbandly rights.”

  His face showed nothing, but she could see amusement in his eyes. “I already know who you are. You’re Molly. My wife.”

  She waved a hand in dismissal. “That’s a name and a title. It’s not me.” Suddenly inspired, she covered her eyes. “What color are my eyes?”

  He hesitated. “Green, sort of. Or maybe brownish-something.”

  “See?” Dropping her hand, she looked up with a smirk. “You don’t even know the color of my eyes, or what color I prefer, or what I do in my spare time, or if I have a favorite food. In fact, you know nothing about me at all.”

  He gave that some thought. “I know you’re a good nurse, you’re smart, you’re trying to do well by your niece and nephew, and you’re . . . earnest.”

  Earnest? Good Lord, she sounded like a yapping terrier. And wasn’t earnest somewhere between “well-meaning” and “desperate”? What woman wanted to be thought of as earnest, for heaven’s sake?

  “Beets,” he said, interrupting her mental rant.

  She blinked at him.

  “Me, neither,” he went on, taking her silence for consensus. “Blue.”

  “My favorite color?” Molly was having trouble keeping up. “No.”

  “Orange. Purple. Yellow.”

  “No to all three.” Biting back a smile, she shook her head. “It’s not going to be that easy, husband. You’ll have to do more than list colors. You’ll have to get to know me, and then maybe we can talk about . . . the other.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked. “My husbandly rights.”

  “Exactly. Now please leave, so I can take my bath.”

  His expressive eyes lit up at that. “If I helped, I could get to know you faster.”

  “Go,” she ordered, hoping he didn’t see the laughter she was barely able to hold in check.

  But instead of moving away, he leaned closer. Then closer still, until his face was mere inches from hers and her eyes lost focus and started to cross.

  Oh, Lord, she thought, frozen somewhere between shock and anticipation. He’s going to kiss me. Just an inch more and—

  “Almost green,” he said and straightened. “So I was almost right.”

  Molly swayed, disoriented and oddly off balance.

  With a nod of satisfaction he turned toward the door, then stopped and turned back. He was frowning again. “At least tell me you can add and subtract.”

  “Y-Yes, of course I can.”

  “Well, there’s that then.” With a sigh, he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. Which somehow made the room seem suddenly quite a bit larger.

  By the time Molly had left her room an hour later, bathed, dressed, and ravenously hungry, she had come to the conclusion that being courted by her husband might not be a bad thing.

  At one time she had dreamed of being courted, of having a husband and children of her own. Then somewhere between pinafores and a surgical smock, that dream, much less the opportunity to make it into a reality, had simply withered away. But the instant Hank had planted that idea into her mind, all those hopes and fantasies had come roaring back. Suddenly, she had another chance—probably a last chance—to experience the merry chase other women whispered about and authors of romantic novels described in such eloquent detail.

  Plus, she thought as she headed downstairs, it had the added bonus of keeping her husband at arm’s length until she decided what to do about this sham marriage.

  Courting. What did that mean, exactly? What was she supposed to do? Did she even have the proper clothes? It was ludicrous, really, that at the spinsterish age of twenty-six all those adolescent yearnings and doubts should grip he
r so strongly.

  Would he recite poetry? Tell her she was beautiful?

  The notion almost made her laugh. Romantic words from the man who had wrestled her over a chamber pot? Not likely.

  As she stepped across the entry into the main room, Molly found it teeming with children and an odd assortment of people. Seeing them interact, she decided the Wilkins family was every bit as unorthodox as any Southern household with its mishmash of relatives, friends, hangers-on, and beloved servants.

  In addition to Brady’s family of four, and now Hank’s family of four, there were seven other people who either lived in the house or spent so much time there they might as well: the Mexican house-keeper, Consuelo; the Garcia sisters, who tended the nursery; two young Mexican girls, who did a bit of everything—all of whom spoke limited English with such strong accents Molly had difficulty following them—an ancient Negro woman named Iantha, who supervised the kitchen; and Dougal, an elderly Scotsman who did little but argue with Brady, sleep sprawled out on the couches, and harass the children, to their utter delight. None of these seven was actually family, but all were treated as such.

  “There you are.” Smiling at Molly, Jessica hitched the toddler she carried higher on her hip, then shot a warning look at a small boy dangling upside down off the arm of a chair. With reluctance, he righted himself and came to stand dutifully beside his mother. “Children, this is your Aunt Molly,” Jessica said, then beaming proudly at the children, added, “And this is Abigail and Ben.”

  “Hello,” Molly said, which apparently was the release signal for Ben because he immediately ducked beneath Jessica’s arm and climbed back into the chair.

  Jessica’s smile became strained. “He’s still in his twos,” she explained, as if that might mean something to Molly, which it didn’t. “And Abby, here, is getting ready to walk. Saints preserve us.”