“You’re welcome.”
Belatedly, she realized that she should have thanked him, but she was still angry, and his sarcasm rankled. “I’m sure you mean well,” he said stiffly, “but I am accustomed to finer things. I’ve always had servants do my cooking and cleaning. My bed had new linens, the table held the proper utensils. It isn’t fair, what you are asking of me. Mine is a gentler, more refined life; can’t expect me to survive in this shack.”
“What I hear, things have changed up at the Willows. You don’t have much in the way of servants, or china and crystal there, either.”
“You enjoy being cruel, don’t you? I know what this is. It’s some attempt at revenge. You hold a grudge, for what we did as children, and now you mean to punish Lance and me forever.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, my lady.” Stared at her coldly. “Seeking revenge might be lance’s idea of fun, but trust me I have better ways to waste my time. You two can go to the devil together, for all I care, but I did win your services in a fair fight, and as probably noticed, I don’t care leaving the children alone while I’m gone.”
“But-“
He held up a tired hand. “Next time I come around, maybe we can discuss this like a reasonable adults, but right now, I am too busy for your tantrums.” He glanced meaningfully up at the shack. “If I were you, I would get the boys to do something about repairing bad door, or there’s no telling what will be crawling inside the cabin while you sleep.”
Gwen shivered. “Please, Michael, I can’t spend another night here. What you are doing is…is torture!”
“I suppose you could look at it that way,” he said, as he stepped into his boat. “But considering you have no choice, why not think of your stay here as redemption? Not everyone gets to right an old wrong.”
With a tight smile, he handed her a string of fish and, leaving Gwen sputtering helplessly on the bank, he pulled off in his boat.
Rite an old wrong? Denying the twinkle of guilt, she marched back to the shack, insisting that the man hadn’t the least idea what he was talking about. She was the one who been wronged; he had kidnapped her. Michael needed the redemption, she insisted as she slapped the fish on a platter. Her conscience was as clean as a new slate.
She left the fish on the table, since she hadn’t the least idea what to do with them, and went to her room to inspect her new clothes. Looking at the dress he had bought her, she felt another twinge, this one harder to overlook. Not many men would have thought to bring her clean clothing. How selfish and shallow she sounded, complaining about the quality, when it was clear the man hadn’t the means of obtaining anything better.
At least the clothes were clean and fresh smelling. Which was a good deal more than she could say about what she now wore. And what did the style matter? It wasn’t as if anyone she knew what ever see her here, way out here in this shack.
All I once, she couldn’t wait to wash up and change. With wave of longing, she wished for her brass tub at the Willows, along with Aunt Agatha’s delicate, scented soaps for her hair, but she supposed the soap in the room would just have to do.
Lifting up the blue dress, spun with it in front of her. Oh yes, she would primp and preen, next time she saw Michael… well, nobody would call her a drowned rat.
“That’s not yours!” Jude cried, bursting through the door. He looked at Gwen as if she were a witch to be burned at the stake. “What are you doing with our mothers things?”
Gwen almost dropped the dress. “Michael gave them to me.”
“He didn’t. He wouldn’t.”
Recovering from her initial surprise, Gwen grew angry. As if she would steal a dead woman’s clothes. “He most certainly did give them to me,” she said firmly, “and where are your manners? You don’t barge into a bedroom uninvited, and you certainly don’t go around branding someone a thief without proof.” Uneasily, she recalled once doing the same to the children.
“You’re not my mother,” Jude lashed out. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
“For pity’s sake…” Gwen trailed off, for the child had already left, slamming the door. Following to the porch, she called after him. “Wait a minute, Jude. Who’s going to fix this door?”
“Fix it yourself,” said over his shoulder. “You broke it.”
“But I don’t have the least knowledge of carpentry. Come back here,” she demanded when the boy refused to stop. “Where do you think you are going?”
“What do you care? You will have the cabin to yourself all day, since we won’t plan to be back until late.”
Gwen raised a hand to call him, but Jude was already vanishing into the bushes. Hateful boy. She was glad he was gone. Delighted.
Yet, going back inside, she felt overwhelmed by the empty silence. The day stretched long and tiresome, with nothing to do. Ignoring the piles of dirty dishes, as well as the split doorframe behind her, she wondered back to her room. Sheer move her old clothing and sponged herself clean, but felt too tired and depressed to dress. Donning the clean dress from the sack, she sank down on the narrow cot. As the straw poked into her back, she felt a rush of longing for her soft, warm bed at home, only to remember on the next breath that her beloved bed had long since been sold.
“Things have changed at the Willows,” Michael had said, unhappily, she knew he was right.
Worse, he thought as she felt sleep over taker, life was demanding that she change with them.
***
Gwen awoke from another lurid dream, jolted from her fantasy by heavy pounding. In her grogginess, she thought at first that it must be Michael’s horse, to take her away from this dreadful shack, those awful children.
Yet, even as the smile formed on her lips, it struck her that the noise was too sharp, too incessant, to be a horses footsteps. No, now that she thought about it, it sounded more like someone trying to break down her door.
Slowly, she remembered breaking a door, and telling Jude to fix it.
She rose, so excited that the child had obeyed her, she rushed into the other room without thinking. As such, she was thoroughly taken aback to find Michael crouched in the doorframe, nails in his mouth and hammer in hand. “Oh, it’s you,” was all she could think to say.
His eyes widen as his gaze went from her head to her toes. “You were expecting someone else?” He asked, spitting the nails in his hands. “Dressed like that?”
Too late, she remembered falling asleep in her shift. Looking down, she found a strap had slipped from her shoulder, leaving much too much of her shoulders exposed. Oh dear, and her right nipple was poking out over the lace trim. No wonder he was gaping.
Hastily gathering the cotton closer, she mumbled an apology and fled. She could hear the pounding resume as she beat a retreat to her room.
Damn that man. Must he always manage to catch her off guard? So much for her plans to greet him confidently, properly groomed, so prim and sedate and proper that he would be the one stuttering. Instead she’d gone charging into the Fourier in her underwear.
Muttering to herself, she wiggled into the slate blue cotton and pinned up her hair in record time.
When she returned to the main room, Michael had finished the repairs on the door and was moving about in the kitchen. She wished she hadn’t take that nap. Not only had it made her feel groggy and disoriented; and made her seem lazier and more useless than ever. “What are you doing here?” She asked, trying to take the attention off herself.
“I live here,” he said flippantly, pulling a soot stained kettle from the fire. Must have seen her frown, for he nodded back at the door. “Actually, I came to fix that.” Moving the last of the previous night’s dishes from the table to the ever-growing pile on the counter, he poured himself a cup of coffee and gestured her to the chair. “Won’t you join me? I think it is time you and I had a talk.”
He looked away, but not before his gaze strayed to her breast, she might be fully cover now, but they both knew what he’d seen earlier. If you lecture her o
n her ladylike behavior, she thought angrily, she would happily hit him in the ears.
“I don’t drink coffee,” she told him tightly, primly spreading her skirts as he slid the chair beneath her. “But it would be nice.”
“We don’t have any-“he stopped himself, as if determined not to be goaded. Forcing a smile, he held up the coffee pot. “Jeffrey claims I make the best coffee in seven states. Sure you won’t give it a try?”
“I suppose,” she offered reluctantly, for she hated this sickly sweet beverage. Though this was not the café she drinks at the Willows, she saw as Michael poured her a cup. “It’s so…so dark.”
“I drink it black,” he said, handing it to her. “I can offer you sugar, but I’m afraid of the children finished the last of the milk this morning.”
Smiling all the more tightly, Gwen risk a sip. It took all her willpower not to spit the hot, bitter taste out of her mouth. Might as well then he her out go haul, she decided; it sure had the same kick.
Michael, who had been watching her face, tried not to grin. “Cajun coffee takes more getting used to. You will come to love them time.”
Gwen nodded, “actually I have been meaning to talk to you, Michael?”
With his attention focused on her, Gwen found it hard speak. “You are an intelligent, reasonable man. Surely we can reach a compromise.” She pause strategically to give him a coy smile, and hoped she wouldn’t darken her teeth with that coffee.
“The flattering is wasted on me, my lady. Don’t bother batting your lashes. You’ll get a good deal further, if you just come out and say it.”
That was the crux of it; she no longer knew what she wanted. To go home, surely, but first, she must repay whatever debt she might owe him. She spent a few weeks teaching his children, perhaps he’d considered the score settled and never bother her again.
“Very well,” he said pausing, finding it hard to begin. “This is what I was thinking. Maybe we can help each other.”
“Can we now?” Watching her warily, took a sip of coffee, swallowing as if he actually enjoyed it.
“Well, I thought, maybe I can do a bit more than merely watch over the children. What if I provide daily lessons in reading and sums, as well as rudiments of civilized behavior?”
“Rudiments?”
“Come now, Michael. Surely you have noticed there atrocious manners. And when was the last time they took a bath?”
His gaze narrowed. “So now we know your part. Pardon my curiosity, but I can’t wait to hear mine.”
Gwen wandered if her expression could get any tighter and still be considered a smile. “It is quite easy. Once the children can conduct themselves properly in a social situation, you will take me home.”
“I see.”
Excited that she’d devised a viable compromise for them both, she went on. “Personally, I can’t see why I can’t be back at the Willows by the end of this month.”
“Two weeks?” His cup banged set it on the table. “Don’t you think they will choke to death, if you try to jam that much education down the throats in a fortnight?”
Gwen was determined not to let his fierce expression intimidate her. “Please, I don’t get home soon, I will never outlive this scandal. Folks will accept that I would go off visiting for a month, but they would never believe I would stay away longer than that.”
“You stayed in Boston for over five years, and no one lifted an eyebrow. I can’t see how another year could possibly hurt.”
“A year?” Gwen could not control her gasp. “You have got to be joking.”
“Do I?”
She stood. “I am not getting younger, you know. I must find a husband.”
“You already have one.” Pushing back from the chair, he stood. “One who happens to have five children badly in need of a woman’s tender care.”
“That marriage was false. Besides, the children don’t want my tender care. They hate me.”
“Can you blame them?” He glared at her. “From the start, you looked at those boys as if you were holding your nose against the stench. You think of them like they are demons straight from hell. Can you see there just babies, struggling to cope with the fact that they recently lost their mother?”
With another unwelcome twinge, she thought back to how she felt when her mama had died–how she still felt it. No wonder Michael was so angry, so bitter, if he’d just buried his wife. “I am sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know you lost her such a short time ago. It must be hard on you all.”
He shrugged. “The boys want me to think they are holding up fine, but the twins still have nightmares. Jude tries sit up with them, and then there’s Christopher, who cries himself to sleep most every night. What did truly need is a woman’s comfort.”
“I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”
Holding her gaze with his own, he came to her side of the table. “You were, back when you played Camelot. I saw your compassion, how you overruled Lance when his edicts were too severe. You were the only one who watch out for the smaller children, the forgotten ones.”
He didn’t mention himself, but it hovered between them all the same.
“Watching you play,” he went on, “I would be remembered of your mother. She had different expectations, but a person could count on Amanda be kind and fair.”
He hit a nerve. Mother was dead; the last thing Gwen wanted was to be compared to her. Especially when she doubted the comparison would be judged in her favor. “Oh, very well,” she agreed, hoping to see his attention. “I suppose I could stretch out my stay to a month.”
“How gracious of you.” Shaking his head, Michael turned for the door. “But I can’t see how you can accomplish much in less than six.”
“I am giving up a portion of my life for relative strangers,” she called to his back. “How can you expect more than eight weeks of my time?’
Pausing in the door frame, he turned back to study her. “Do I have your word of honor you won’t run off, or leave the children neglected?”
She nodded eagerly, happy that he was at last listening to reason.
“Good,” he tossed over his shoulder, slamming the door behind him. “Then three months should do it.”
Her first reaction was blank, for once more he was stomping off without giving her the chance to fight back. Yet there was no sense going after him. It got her nowhere, arguing with him. She’d managed to reduce his requirements from twelve months to three by being nice. Maybe next time she should whittle her sentence down further. If she exerted a little charm.
Returning to her bedroom, she conceded that the children did need instruction from someone. And by taking the time to teach them, maybe she could erase whatever it was Michael felt she owed him. In the process, maybe she could even do something that would have made her mother proud.
Yes, she could clean the slate, and perhaps even her conscious. By the end of the month, Gwen would have those children so well behaved and well-adjusted, Michael would be grateful enough to let her go early.
She could do this, she thought, refusing to look at the dirty dishes as she left the kitchen.
After all, how bad could five children be?
***
Later that evening, Patrick watch Jude gather them in a tight circle, symbolically closing ranks, as they decided what to do about the fact that the woman had agreed to stay and take care of them for the next few months.
“We have got to step up our efforts to make the woman miserable, “Jude announced in a harsh whisper, eyeing each in turn. “We can keep putting loose straw in her bed, and making the meals so awful she won’t want to eat them, but we have got to do something worse. By the time he returns, she’s got to be complaining so badly, he will pay anything to get her away.”
“But it doesn’t seem very nice.” Patrick felt compelled to intervene, unnerved by the anger he saw on Jude’s face. “Mother always said we should be gracious to our guests.”
“She’s not a gues
t, she is a nuisance.” Jude glared at him as if he were the woman.” Tell me, Patrick, do you want her staying?”
“No. but-“
“Does anyone else?”
One by one, the other boys shook their heads.
“Very well then, I say it’s time to use the snake.”
Chapter 13
Jervis sat at his brother’s desk, once the center of all activity on the plantation, and let himself pretend for a moment that he was master of the Willows. It all could have been his, should have been his, if not for Michael. Damn that man for showing up when he did and ruining everything.
Yet, how could anyone predict that John would be so childishly impressed I Michael prowess, so fascinated by tells of what that Amanda was said to have done? Michael was a man’s man, John insisted and a damn sight better candidate for taking over the Willows than anyone else in that competition. Knowing his ensuing sneer was for Lance, Jervis felt more desperate than ever to get Glenn’s marriage an old. All the way to get both the trust fund and his brothers plantation was to make certain Gwen’s marriage was to go to Lance.
His fury revived as he thought about returning home to find the girl missing, but unlike the others, Jervis doubted Gwen had gone off with Michael. Having been brought up to let others take care of her, Gwen would not have lasted long in the swamp. Hardships would have brought that pampered young by back by morning.
No, it seems for more likely Michael had kidnapped the girl.
Frustratingly enough, his brother refused to go after his daughter, insisting that it was up to her new husband to take care for Gwen. It was useless to argue, for John refused to be swayed from this decision. Jervis thought it would take some heinous action by Michael, before the man’s image could ever be black in John’s drunk blinded eyes.
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