by Shirl Henke
I am married to a coldhearted stranger whose bed I must share each night. Oh, it was so rough and degrading. How could I ever have thought... Her thoughts dissolved in a startled gasp of pain when she slid across the bed to put her feet on the floor. He had hurt her! When she gingerly stood up and looked at the faint smears of blood on the sheets, she whitened. A quick examination of her gown told the tale of their origin.
“I must have a bath! Oh, God, I have to be clean!” As if someone had read her mind, there was a discreet tap on the door. Carrie answered, “Who is there?”
“Steward, ma'am. Your husband requested hot bath water and a tub. We've brought them.”
In a few short moments Carrie was blissfully luxuriating in the hot scented water, restoring her bruised and torn flesh. Youth imparts a certain resiliency, and Carrie found she possessed more of that quality than she had ever suspected. Once she took inventory of her body and assured herself that she would mend, her mind turned to her benefactor. Well, at least he had been thoughtful enough to send the bath. She was grateful, but she was also apprehensive of the coming night.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I could learn to care for him. Perhaps it isn't just the difference in our ages. Even if I'd married Gerald I might .have been just as unhappy with...bed. Even in her innermost thoughts Carrie couldn't bring herself to say the word “sex,” and she could certainly see no reason to call it “making love”!
If only she'd had a female confidante. Her aunt's mores had given her the notion that women weren't supposed to enjoy sex. Perhaps they could not do so even if they were base enough to try.
However, Carrie remembered her parents and how much they had loved one another. When she had believed herself in love with Gerald Rawlins, she had certainly enjoyed his kisses. Love. That must be the key to it all. If there could be love, then even if the physical aspect of marriage was not enjoyable, it might at least be bearable.
By the time she had finished bathing and dressing for the morning, Carrie's resolve was firm. Noah had been considerate in sending the bath. It was a good sign. She would just have to try harder to breach his defenses, to learn what he was like, to learn to love him. If she could do that, might he not learn to love her as well?
Eagerly she looked in the mirror to check her toilette one last time. Her face was a trifle pale, but her fiery hair was piled elegantly high on her head in a sophisticated style that made her look older. Her dress of tan silk trimmed in brown satin was tasteful and beautifully tailored. The matching chocolate hat, slippers, and parasol completed a picture of-refinement. Yes, she would do, Carrie decided.
“At least I have the wardrobe to impress him. If he likes the way I look and dress, it's a beginning.” Firmly she opened the door and stepped outside into the bright promise of midmorning sunlight.
When Noah saw Carrie moving along the railing, he started to intercept her, then stopped to admire the picture she made and the way the people around her reacted. Male passengers looked with open admiration and women with ill-disguised jealousy. Small wonder. The sun highlighted the dazzling fire of her hair like living tongues of flame, flashing out from beneath her hat. Her delicately sculptured brows arched above bright green eyes, and her pink lips parted in a generous smile as she nodded graciously to fellow passengers. The warm tan and brown tones of her ensemble accented her exotic coloring, enriching the pale ivory complexion and warm red hair.
Just wait till the cattle barons in Miles City see her. I could take her to the governor's mansion or even Washington. Once more Noah congratulated himself on his choice of an aristocratic and refined woman to stand by his side. Yes, she would do, Noah decided.
Carrie watched her husband stride across the crowded deck toward her, wending his way by the passengers who were enjoying the invigorating spring sun. He looked robust and commanding as his strong white teeth flashed a striking smile. She returned it.
Through breakfast they chatted of inconsequential things. He told her more about Montana, the ranch, and Miles City, which was the nearest town of any size. It was easy to get him to discuss his empire.
“You'll like Montana, Carrie. It's a land of men who'll appreciate a woman of your obvious breeding and refinement. Real ladies are still rare and treasured. I'll be proud to show you off as my wife.”
The words were superficially meant as a compliment, she was certain. However, Carrie couldn't help but feel there was an underlying proprietarily tone to his voice that made her uneasy. Before she reconsidered it, she spoke out, “I'm only human, Noah, and not all that refined, really. I'd like to be your helper, your companion, someone you could learn to love. I don't want to be on a pedestal—”
Before she could go on, he fixed her with a stern glare while that patronizing schoolmaster look came over his face once more. “Love.” He fairly sneered the word. “Let me make one thing clear in that vacant, beautiful little head of yours, my darling. Love is for moonstruck boys and flighty old ladies. It's a myth. A wife need only be concerned with providing heirs for her husband and acting as his gracious hostess. In return for your loyalty and duty to me, I'll provide handsomely for you. I'll see to your every material need and leave you and our children well provided for when I die. Forget the love nonsense and accept what I offer you—a fine social position, wealth, comfort, security. That's what life is really about.”
Carrie sat very still during his discourse, trying to discern some cause for the bitterness she sensed in his cold, logical proposition. “Have you never loved anyone?’’ She couldn't seem to stop herself as she whispered the question.
Noah looked exasperated for a second. Then he paused briefly and considered. “Never the romantic dribble you're thinking of. When a man spends a lifetime on the frontier building an empire to bequeath to his descendants, he is forced to give up some things. All the people I cared for died long ago. I'm too old to begin again. Don't ask that.”
Sadly, she looked at his piercing blue eyes and harsh expression. “I'll have to accept your terms in other words. But if—if we have children, they'd need a father's love. She let her words trail off, uncertain and embarrassed to be discussing such a personal thing, recalling the night they had just shared.
“I shall do my best to be a dutiful father, Carrie. But first, you shall have to be a fruitful wife, won't you?”
Something in his tone of voice was even more lewd than the veiled suggestion about her fertility. She felt patronized and cheapened beyond measure. Her temper, repressed for years in Patience's house, flared now. “How dare you! I'm not some piece of livestock—a...a horse!”
Noah was out of patience and determined to quickly bring this romantic fencing of hers to an abrupt end. “Ah, yes, my dear, you are precisely that—a brood mare—to be well ridden!”
Carrie blanched, both appalled at his crudity and devastated by his cruelty. She could not meet his eyes. Gripping her coffee cup securely in both hands, she raised it to her mouth and took a steadying gulp of its scalding strength. So, she would be his ornament and his brood mare, the two “duties of a lady.” How foolish she had been to quest for love.
CHAPTER THREE
After the humiliating setdown from Noah that morning, Carrie confined herself to their cabin for the duration of. the day. Noah demanded a command performance for dinner at the captain's table that evening. Her withdrawn, spiritless demeanor when he came to their stateroom made him furious, as did her simple light-blue muslin gown with the sprigged embroidery around its high collar.
“Take off that washed out, fluffy, little girl's dress and wear something with class.” He ran his long fingers rapidly across her gowns, hanging neatly in their narrow wardrobe by the bedside, and produced a brilliant turquoise silk. It had long, tapered sleeves and was cut very low in front, with sparkling jet beads trimming the bustline, waist, and skirt. The dress was so daring and sophisticated that Carrie had decided not to buy it, but a clever saleswoman must have seen the same potential Noah did, for she had convinced Carrie
it was perfect for her.
With his eyes boring into her trembling body, she stripped off the simple blue and donned the turquoise. When her fingers fumbled nervously with the buttons, he perfunctorily turned her around and efficiently fastened them up the back. She endured his ministrations silently.
“I will not present a sullen, spoiled child as my wife at the captain's table tonight. You will act like a refined, gracious woman.” He finished the buttoning and turned her around, holding her shoulders in his hands, willing her to face him.
His fingers felt like claws, she thought in revulsion as she forced herself to look at his face and acknowledge his command with a nod. The tenor of their relationship for the duration of the trip seemed set from that moment on.
Noah had not exaggerated the length or arduous nature of the journey. The comforts of the steamer were soon forsaken for a brief overnight stay in St. Paul, Minnesota, the end of the Diamond Jo Line's run upriver. Carrie spent a lonely day sitting in a plush silk chair by the window of their hotel room, overlooking the rushing currents of the mighty river she had just left. She wanted desperately to float back south to St. Louis—but to what? Home was lost to her now. Really it had been lost when Naomi and Josiah had died five years earlier. She must continue her rocky journey with Noah Sinclair to his distant kingdom. He concluded his business the following day and finally deigned to take her out for dinner.
The next morning they boarded a Northern Pacific Railroad car for Dakota Territory. It was noisy, jarring, and unbelievably dirty. After a scant few hours of inhaling thick, sooty coal smoke, Carrie knew she'd never be clean again. The windows of the passenger cars had to be opened for ventilation, but the soot from the train's engine whipped inside and enveloped everyone, allowing little freedom to breathe.
The physical misery of her passage west was compounded by psychological pain inflicted by her husband. Whenever they were permitted the privacy of a night's rest in a stopover hotel or roadhouse, Noah insisted on bedding her, coldly and perfunctorily, almost as if it was an onerous task. She endured his attentions woodenly, in aching exhaustion. It seemed to Carrie that he derived more satisfaction from breaking her spirit than he did from his sexual release in her flesh. Whatever his motivation, she was being defeated.
After a grinding five days on the train, they were forced to resort to a stagecoach for the last days of the journey into Montana. The rails had not been laid that far yet. Baths in wayside inns were crude, skimpy affairs at best. The beds were lumpy and frequently inhabited by lice and other even less appealing creatures. After two weeks on the road, her body was abused and sore, her mind numb.
In the past few weeks Carrie had taken in more than her sheltered eighteen years allowed her to assimilate. The vast distances of the Dakotas awed, and cowed her secure Midwestern sensibilities. At the far western edge of the territory the jagged peaks of the Black Hills stood like` sentinels defying invaders. This was the sacred medicine land of Sioux and Cheyenne, Mandan and Blackfoot. Its wild stark beauty both frightened her and called to her, as if from some strange, long-forgotten dream. She shivered uneasily as she looked out the window, wishing they were safely at the Circle S. At least I'll be safe from savage red Indians there, she thought, trying to find some consolation in her plight.
* * * *
The night they arrived in Miles City, Carrie was too exhausted to even notice the bustling little cow town. Noah helped her from the coach and headed straight for the Excelsior Hotel, where he'd wired ahead for rooms. The young clerk's eyes widened in surprise at Mr. Sinclair's beautiful wife, obviously an easterner and obviously much younger than the cattle baron. No one in town had been told that Mr. Sinclair was getting married while he was in St. Louis. Respectfully the clerk, Jubal Akin, led them to the best room in the house, holding his curiosity at bay. Noah was too tired to take her that night. Carrie was grateful, and they both slept soundly.
The next morning, while Noah and Carrie were finishing breakfast in the hotel dining room, a tall, lanky man with leathery, dark skin and a startling shock of snowy-white hair ambled gracefully toward their table. He was dressed in range gear, expensive but well worn, and carried a lethal-looking gun on his hip. When Noah saw him, he motioned curtly for the stranger to approach their table. “Frank, figured you'd be here right on the dime.”
The thin man's long, callused hand grasped Noah's outstretched one, and his bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “I had ta ride out afore th' nighthawks come in ta git here on th' dime.” He let out a chuckle, and the toothy smile he gave Carrie made a startling white slash in his dark, angular face.
Carrie never had seen such a dazzling set of teeth. Frank gave his full attention to the beautiful young woman seated at the table, almost ignoring Noah. Flourishing his hat in one hand, he bowed in a rough facsimile of chivalry.
“Ma'am, welcome ta Circle S country.” His wide smile was infectious, and Carrie found herself returning it.
“This is my general foreman, Frank Lowery, Carrie. Frank, meet·my bride, Mrs. Sinclair from St. Louis.” Possessively, Noah rested his hand on her shoulder as he made the introductions.
Forgetting the weight of his grip, Carrie found herself drawn to her husband's contemporary. Unlike the majority of people on their long journey who were openly curious about the May-December honeymooners, Frank's shrewd but kindly gaze reassured her and asked no questions.
As she rode on the bumpy supply wagon to the Circle S, Carrie listened attentively while Noah and Frank discussed the operation of the ranch. Before they left town, Frank and four Circle S hands loaded up the big rig with what seemed to Carrie enough food staples and seeds to supply an army garrison. One of the young cowboys, Hank Allen, was assigned to drive the wagon on which Carrie was a passenger. Noah and Frank rode close alongside and the other three men took up the rear. Were they guards? Nervously she asked the shy youth who drove if there was any danger from Indians.
He grinned. “Nope, ma'am. Nearest Cheyennes is over ‘cross th' basin now. They move around a mite, but they's peaceful. Onliest one's givin' trouble lately is Sioux, and they's north mostly, in Canady.”
His answer, rather than reassuring Carrie, alarmed her, since it was obvious the territory was swarming with various tribes, all of them in a state of perpetual migration. If only Montana were not so big, Carrie thought in awe. The limitless sky stretched off the far horizons in every direction, its blinding azure melded into the fresh-kissed green of the prairie grasslands. There seemed no shelter, no place to hide in the thin clear air of the high plains. It was utterly alien to Carrie, who had been brought up in the mud-rich humidity of the Mississippi River Basin. The vegetation here was as different from Missouri as the topography. Buffalo grass grew tall and wild, incredibly thick and hearty despite the extremes of heat and cold, drought and flood. Even the sparse outcroppings of coniferous trees stretching to reach the dome of heaven were taller and starker than those back home. It seemed as if everything in nature here was larger than life, as if all the hilly, gentle greenery of the lower Midwest was merely pretty stage scenery compared to the titan landscape of Montana.
Bunches of fat cattle grazed randomly, sprinkled across the undulating plains. Carrie noticed that they were short-horned and thickly built, not at all like the wild, stilt-legged longhorns she had seen pictured in books. She decided to put her feelings of misgiving aside and learn something of her new home. “Are these cattle longhorns? They don't look like the drawings in my books.”
Hank turned to her and grinned. “No, ma'am, them's scraggeldy tough critters, pure mean, 'n' all horns 'n' tails. Texas's where they run. Montana cattlemen mostly raise good shorthorn breedin' stock, lots o' it from Oregon, some from as fer east as Ohio.”
“I've never seen so many herds of cows, all running loose. There must be a lot of ranchers around here, although I've not seen a barn or house since we left Miles City.” Carrie scanned the horizon. ‘‘How soon until we reach Circle S land?”
Hank looked mildly surprised, then considered that she was a tenderfoot. “Been on it fer th' past couple o' hours, ma'am. All them cows is Mr. Noah's. Hisn's th' biggest spread in th' eastern part o' Montana Territory. We'll be at th' big house by sundown, never fret. Guess yore a tad tired from all this bumpin' ‘round. A horse's a lot easier than this hard seat.”.
Carrie flushed, feeling as out of place as a carpetbagger at a cotillion. “I'm afraid I'm consigned to the hard wooden seat, at least for now. I never learned to ride a horse.”
If she had told the boy she never learned to walk, she couldn't have produced more amazement. Lordy, what a greenhorn the boss had brought west! But then again, she was so nice and pretty, Hank thought he would purely love to teach her to ride, yessiree.
When they arrived at the main ranch house toward evening, Carrie was much surprised to see how large and handsome it was. Even Noah's boasting had not prepared her for this gleaming whitewashed structure. The house contained at least a dozen rooms, she guessed as her eyes spanned the wide two-story porch that ringed the front and both sides. Rustling aspens and oaks shaded the beautiful structure from the warm spring sun.
Both Noah and Frank watched Carrie's face. Frank was pleased that the quiet, sad young woman liked her new home. He sensed something was amiss between her and his employer, but was too discreet to ask. Noah's chest swelled with pride for the grandeur of the edifice to which he brought his bride.
“If yew like th' outside, jist wait till yew git a eyeful o' th' inside!” Frank said as he dismounted and assisted Carrie down.
Still stunned by the elegance of the house in the midst of such primitive wilderness, Carrie nodded, anxious to see what lay within.
Noah appeared quickly by her side to take her arm and usher her up the wide front steps onto the deep porch and then in the front door. The interior was as Frank had intimated—startlingly beautiful. Thick Turkish rugs lay on the polished hardwood floors in the long entry hall. Pale blue-and-gold French wallpaper blended in with the deeper colors of the carpet. Off to the left, beyond a gleaming dark oak door, left partly ajar, lay the front parlor with delicate Queen Anne furniture. To the right was the formal dining room, dominated by a long dark oak table and carved sideboard. Crystal candlesticks were set with fat honey-colored candles on both massive pieces of furniture. A huge glass-faced breakfront full of delicate china was barely visible on the far wall. Carrie had thought Hiram and Patience's house in St. Louis grand! By comparison with this, it was merely vulgar.