by Sierra Rose
“You’re running away.”
Flinging aside the reins, he climbed to the ground and stalked around to reach for her hand. Which she furiously pulled away. “C’mon, I’ll help you down.”
“I’ll help myself down, thank you very much. Kindly move aside.”
“Aw, Camellia, don’t be hard-nosed. Just take—”
“I said, move aside!” she snapped at him.
Proving the strength of her words, she grabbed her skirt and all her accessories and, holding onto the rail, swung carefully onto the step and thence to the packed earth below. With only the tiniest of hesitations, the tiniest of stumbles. Chin in the air, she sashayed to the front porch and inside the house without a backward glance.
“Oh, fire and brimstone,” he muttered.
Beating his hat against one thigh in what might have been frustration, he stared at the closed door for a long soundless few minutes. The horse, switching his tail at several bothersome flies, sent an inquiring look sideways. Well, are we going to do this, or not? I’m ready for my afternoon nap.
Ben felt irritated beyond measure. Married barely twenty-four hours, and already at loggerheads. A standoff that could end up nearly as bloody as one of the lesser battles of Tennessee, or Georgia. This did not bode well for the future. Wasn’t his wife supposed to obey him? Intelligent or not, shouldn’t she keep some of those opinions to herself—especially when they related to his own behavior? Stars above, she ought to have enough respect for her husband, especially when they were so new to each other, to keep quiet. She ought to follow his guidance!
And that made him mad all over again.
The quarrel had blown up out of nowhere, fierce and engulfing as a summer storm. Pray Heaven it might blow away just as quickly, without any damage left behind.
A light slap on Balaam’s rump dispatched a small cloud of dust and horsehair.
“All right, boy. Let’s get you back to the stable. At least one of us might’s well have themselves a peaceful few hours.”
Chapter Ten
“I TRULY BELIEVE, IF she’d held a Colt .44 in her hand, and known how to fire it, I’d be a dead man, right now.” Ben’s aggrieved pronouncement was made in low tones to an attentive Gabriel Havers, in the farthest corner of the area to which they had retired.
“That hot under the collar, eh?” The doctor clucked his tongue and shook his head, both at the same time. An admirable talent. “Reckon you’re lucky that you’re still standin’ upright, then, insteada bein’ measured for your coffin. That girl does seem a feisty one.”
“How could I have gone so far wrong? We’ve been married one day. One blasted day! And I couldn’t feel less married than—well, than ol’ Balaam, that I rented this mawnin’ from the stable!” Ben took a long hard swallow of whatever kind of bootleg bourbon resided in his glass.
Gabe snorted, not unsympathetically. “Must be some kinda world record, I would say.”
From returning the horse and buggy to Norton’s Livery, the hapless newlywed had wandered to his own mercantile, dolefully unlocking the door and sneaking inside, only to potter from this to that to the other. Finally, putting away what he had disturbed, and writing out a few last-minute instructions for his capable assistant manager, he had locked the door again and taken himself over to the Sarsaparilla for an early supper. It was a fair bet that there was no way on God’s green earth he would get a meal from Camellia tonight. No matter how poor a cook she might be.
Fortunately the Café provided not only a hearty bill of fare but also liquor, in unending supply.
It was with a plate full of good hot beef stew and a half-empty bottle that Gabriel, stopping by to reward himself after attending to a difficult labor on one of the neighboring farms, found him.
“Man, you look like you lost your best friend,” he observed. “And since, to my knowledge, it is me, myself, and I who serve as your best friend, I know that ain’t true. What’re you doin’ here, when you got a wife at—”
“Either shut up and sit down,” growled Ben, with feeling, “or get out. I’m in no mood to deal with your malarkey.”
“Holy Hannah. You’ve done gone off the deep end. What happened to get you in such a lather?” Ignoring the burst of spleen, Gabriel yanked out a free chair and signaled for the waiter. “I’ll have what he’s got,” he placed the order in an aside. “May’s well bring along an empty glass, too.”
Silence reigned at their table for a few minutes, while conversation ebbed and flowed in the other parts of the room, crockery clattered, and Ben sullenly but methodically plied his knife and fork.
“Tasty?”
“Yeah.”
“Fillin’?”
“To a tee.”
Gabriel was tired. He had spent a goodly number of hours working to extract a reluctant baby from its anguished mother’s womb, and he was physically drained from the effort. It had been a touch-and-go situation, toward the end, but fortunately he had brought both safely through perilous waters into safe haven. Leaving them and a vastly relieved new father to recover from the ordeal, he now wanted nothing more than to fill his empty gullet and crash onto his single bed.
Still, a few gulps of redeye couldn’t hurt.
“Ah, thanks, Billy.” Gratefully he acknowledged the steaming dish placed almost under his nose, and began to dig in. “So,” he continued the earlier thread of conversation, “all is not well in this corner of Paradise, I take it?”
“You would take it correct.”
“Huh.” Gabriel chewed meditatively on a baking-powder biscuit. “And just what started all this foofaraw?”
“Hanged if I know.”
“Well, son, either you wanna talk about it, or you don’t. Which?”
Ben slugged down another couple fingers of rye whiskey. Or firewater. Or rotgut. Or tonsil paint. Whatever was in the bottle, he was having it, and plainly not happy about sharing. Meanwhile glancing around, to note that many of the customers had cleared out and the place was almost empty behind its pretty blue-checked curtains. Still, he kept his voice low-toned when he answered, to relate how events had proceeded from pleasant to putrid during the afternoon’s drive.
Once he was finally finished venting, his friend needed a belt of intoxicants himself.
“So, you got no idea what you said or did to get her so upset?”
“Not a clue. Soon as I told her I was headin’ to Manifest tomorrow, by myself, she flew off the handle and stormed inside. And I ain’t seen or talked to her since.”
Gabriel, his plate left half-full as his appetite eased, leaned back in his chair to consider. “Well, y’ know, I ain’t never been married, so I can’t give you a world of advice. But I do b’lieve I know a little bit more about women than you do.”
“Prob’ly true. You been around the block a few times.”
“Huh,” the doctor, miffed, said again. “You needn’t sound so sanctimonious about it.”
Finished, Ben shoved his dish aside and got down to some serious drinking. “Maybe I oughta talk to somebody else about this.”
“Yeah, by all means, do that,” hooted Gabe. “B’cause you got such a large circle of friends to choose from.”
The muscle in Ben’s furious jaw was working overtime. “Just keep on a-yappin’. I can easily make my circle just one friend smaller.”
“That possibility worries me no end.” Shrugging his shoulders in the brown frock coat, shoulders that ached abominably after their ordeal, he replenished his own supply of killer sauce. “Sounds to me, O great purveyor of incidentals, like a classic case of misunderstanding. Forget talkin’ with me; have you tried talkin’ with her?”
“With Camellia?” Ben’s expression became inordinately astounded. “You joshin’ me? Why would I do that?”
Propping both elbows on the table top with a thunk, Gabriel buried his face in both palms and let out a resounding groan. “Oh, Lord help me. Was there ever such a fool of a man? All right.” Drawing in a deep breath, he laid both hands
flat to glare at his companion. “Point is, what’re you gonna do about it?”
“Dunno. Get drunk, I guess.”
“No, by gum, you are not. You get to the place where you’re feelin’ no pain, Benjamin, then you betake yourself home and snuggle up to that pretty wife of yours and make things right.”
“Now, that,” said Ben owlishly, squinting across the table, “is part of the problem.”
Gabriel’s squint in return turned to a deep frown. “Huh. Typical. Why is it none of you high-powered males consider consultin’ with a physician when it comes to handlin’ a gently bred bride? But, no, you just go it alone, never think about askin’ questions that might make things easier for both of you. Instead, you just bumble along and cause all sorts of trouble. At least, I think that’s what I’m hearin’. Am I correct?”
The man winced. “Pretty much hit the nail on the head.”
“And as for you takin’ off, first thing in the mawnin’...well, can’t say I blame her for gettin’ in a temper. Which is only matched by your own, my friend. I get the feelin’ you two are gonna be like fire set to tinder at any hour of the day.”
“Yeah, so I figured. And your advice?”
“You are buyin’ my supper, ain’t you? So, then, here’s my advice: either cancel the trip or ask her to go with you.”
But there Gabe went too far. As usual, in the discussion of some thorny issue, Ben would, to his credit, listen and ponder. But once he took a stand, pro or con, he was done. If God and all His angels couldn’t change the man’s mind, then the doctor’s paltry argument would hardly make a dent in his determination to do exactly what he had intended to do. In fact, prodding too forcefully only tended to stiffen his resolve. The word compromise did not exist in Benjamin Forrester’s vocabulary.
“I’m doin’ neither, and that’s that,” he told his friend flatly. “I reckon I’m old enough, and smart enough, to make my own decisions. She’ll just haveta abide by what I say.”
“No discussion allowed, huh?” Gabe folded both arms across his sturdy chest. “All these years, I didn’t realize you were such a hard nose. Your pride may be headin’ for a fall, son.”
“Better a fall than gone forever. A man ain’t much of a man if he don’t take a stand on what matters.”
Gabriel cocked his head slightly to one side, like an inquisitive raven. “And it matters that much to you, winnin’ this here dispute with your wife?”
“Darned tootin’ it matters. I’m the head of the household, and she’d oughta learn that fact.”
An autocrat, no less. And adamant. An adamant autocrat, the worst of every world. The doctor sighed and took another sip from his glass. Amazing how, the more you thought you knew someone, the less you really knew him.
The hour was much later than an exhausted Gabriel would have preferred when the two of them finally left the Sarsaparilla. By then, both were considerably far along in their cups, and the Café’s owner had had to kick them out.
“And it’s Sunday night and all, anyway,” Wilbur Knaack, exasperated by having to stay so long past closing, reminded them. “You hang around much more, and I’m gonna be chargin’ you rent.”
“Sorry, my friend,” Gabriel apologized. He had risen to help Ben to his unsteady feet, and they were making their way to the door. “It won’t happen again.”
“You’re goldarned right it won’t,” grumbled Wilbur. Following them with keys in hand, he was already stripping off his apron and blowing out lamps.
“See, now you’ve got somebody else mad at you,” chuckled the irrepressible doctor. “You’re addin’ up a right smart score of folks who’d like to kick your tail.”
By stepping down off the boardwalk, in near dark, Ben suddenly stumbled and almost took a header into the street. Gabriel sighed again with the expression of a martyr and flung the merchant’s arm over his own shoulders, for support.
“You takin’ me home, Gabe?”
“Yeah. I don’t think you could make it on your own, you worthless son of a jackal.”
Even in his less than sober state, Ben took umbrage at the insult, and then Gabriel took more umbrage because Ben had taken first umbrage. Both were feeling in fine feather by the time they had ambled the considerable distance to the Forrester house and clumped up onto the front porch.
“Dark, I see.” Ben’s squint had somewhat straightened his crossed eyes as he offered this officious pronouncement.
It was anyone’s guess how the man would get himself up and going in the morning, let alone climb into a buggy for his half-day’s trip. And, as for conducting any sort of business while suffering from a hangover... Well, Gabe just couldn’t figure how that might be done. A few drops of Laudanum would help ease the pain, did Ben happen to have a bottle handy. And if he didn’t—well, he would just have to go on suffering, with little sympathy from the doctor.
Having no lamp lit to guide their footsteps, and only the pale rays of a burgeoning moon cast through the windows, both stumbled into things and tripped over things and knocked against things. Each, with every bit of noise, urged a sententious “Sssshhh!” upon the other.
“Man,” muttered Gabriel uneasily, looking around. “The place is awful quiet. You think maybe she’s up and left you?”
“Naw.” Plopping down onto the upholstered sofa, Ben leaned back and yawned. “Upstairs. No doubt about it. I’ll find her there—come mawnin’.” Another yawn. “Thanks, Gabe. ’Ppreciate you—lookin’ after me.”
A great gush of air whooshed out of his collapsed lungs, and suddenly he toppled over sideways, like a logger’s felled tree, and began to snore.
“You don’t need me, you half-witted cretin,” muttered Gabe. He picked up his friend’s legs, one at a time and heavy as sin, to drop on the length of the cushions. “You need some danged dedicated guardian angel. Especially when Mrs. Forrester finds you here in a few hours.”
Shaking his head at the determined idiocy of most males, and this one in particular, he made his departure. It was much less noisy than their entrance.
Chapter Eleven
CAMELLIA HAD, TO HER everlasting shame, pretended to be deeply asleep.
Oh, she wasn’t proud of dissimulation. But what was one to do, when one’s errant bullheaded husband refuses to give way on any issue, and both he and his wife were too stiff-necked—and probably too pressed for time before his impending departure—to discuss those issues?
Probably, by the time he returned, she would have cooled off. A week is way too many hours long to hold a temper. At least, from her point of view. She wouldn’t know about his, since they hadn’t been together enough to discuss such vital matters.
She didn’t know where Ben had gone, after he had disappeared with horse and buggy yesterday afternoon, because he hadn’t bothered to keep her informed of any plans from then on. And, after all, why should he? She was only his wife.
What, Camellia wondered, were the laws concerning divorce in Texas, after just one day of wedded bliss?
So, unsure of when—or if—he would once again walk through their door, she had kept herself occupied. Changing into her oldest and thinnest skirt and shirtwaist, she had tackled the kitchen. Cooking like a restaurant chef might be beyond her range of talent (for the moment, although she was determined to change that), and she had had little experience in the realm of actual cleaning. But Ben’s kitchen had demanded it. The heavy black stove had, in fact, almost sat back on its hind legs and begged.
In the clear light of day, the place was a mess. Dust and grease caked the sink, the counters, the two great windows, the utensils left about; cobwebs draped every corner; dirt lay in haphazard piles here and there on the plain wooden floor.
She had noticed its sadly unkempt condition during the last two weeks of residence with her sisters, but had done little to improve things. Too many other details had claimed her attention. Such as planning for her wedding, and keeping her cooped-up sisters from wringing each other’s necks, and unpacking essentials
from their wardrobes in the barn.
“Hot water,” Camellia, looking around, decided on her first order of business. “Soap. And scrub brushes.”
Good hard physical labor, fueled by aggravation and hurt, can help take the starch out of the staunchest backbone. Several hours later of a marathon session on hands and knees and stepstool, interrupted several times by a sudden, involuntary spate of angry tears, she treated herself to a fresh cup of coffee and a seat at the table.
Everything smelled so fresh and pristine, and looked that way, as well. For someone unused to doing a servant’s work, she had acquitted herself with distinction, and pride filled her sore heart as she surveyed the results. Windows had been pried open to let in the early evening breeze, spotless towels and rag rugs had been set straight, garbage had been removed, and all extraneous utensils had been put in place. This was now an exemplary room (not to compare, of course, with the grandeur of her mansion in St. Louis), put to order by her own lily-white fingers, and one which she would not be ashamed to invite anyone to visit.
There was no sign, no sound, no sight of Ben. Vaguely, and a trifle vexedly, she wondered where he was. Then came a fresh burst of tears, which she furiously blotted away. Wearily contemplating what she had accomplished, Camellia decided she might tackle the parlor tomorrow.
If she were still in residence.
She had clumsily cooked herself some supper. Eggs again, because they were easy, and bread warmed in the oven, and a helping of that marvelous strawberry jam. Then, after returning her space to its spic-and-span state, she blew out the lamps and retired upstairs.
To the spare room, down the hall. After her usual nighttime ablutions and the donning of a soft lawn gown, she transferred her few personal possessions to the dresser drawers and top and climbed into bed. There, somewhat comforted by the clean outdoorsy scent of the linens and the sweet nocturnal air from under the great trees, she read until drowsiness overcame her.