Ariah shook her head and leaned forward, eager to hear the story. Pritchard scooted across the bed until he was seated next to her. The air was chilly and she automatically pulled the covers over their legs.
"The lumbermen held contests to see who could cut down trees the fastest, scale a standing tree the quickest, throw a hatchet the farthest, things like that." Pritchard grinned. "Uncle Bart was only fourteen, but he put those full-grown men to shame. There they were, experienced lumbermen, and he tied their best man in half the events."
"Oh, Pritchard." Ariah laughed. "Are you sure Hester hadn't exaggerated a bit?"
"Maybe, but to me he sounded better than Paul Bunyan. I think I came mostly to meet Uncle Bart, hoping somehow I could get to be a little like him."
The wistfulness in his voice touched her. Without thinking she placed her hand on his arm. "You have your own good points, Pritchard. You don't need to be like Bartholomew."
"You mean that?" He took her hand in his while he gazed intently into her eyes, the yearning in them plain to see.
"Of course I mean it. Why, you're . . ." Desperately she searched for an honest compliment she could give him. "You've been very kind and understanding to me. You're strong, too, and well, I bet you play stickball better than he does."
"Baseball," he said sadly.
Seeing Pritchard's vulnerability heightened the guilt she felt for having denied him a true wife. He had married her in good faith and . . .
The awful realization came to her that she had, in her own perhaps gentler and more innocent way, done to Pritchard what Hester had done to Bartholomew. She had denied her husband her bed only one day after their marriage.
Shame shafted through her like lightning through clouds.
Pritchard squeezed her hand, reclaiming her attention. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
Very wrong. So very, very wrong. How could she have done this to him? His only real failing was not being Bartholomew. She had never given him a chance to show her who he truly was or could be. Staring at him, face to face, she found herself overwhelmed by guilt and sorrow and dread.
"Oh Pritchard, I . . ."
They were sitting close, their shoulders almost touching, and she was looking up at him, her pretty face full of concern and what he thought might be desire. Pritchard's body suddenly tautened, and grew hard. Her fragrance, sweet and clean, filled his nostrils. Shadows that were her nipples showed through the thin fabric of her gown. Nipples he had never gotten to see, to touch, to taste. His wife's nipples.
The fear and inexperience that had unmanned him on their wedding night was gone now. He knew how to put his lips to hers, how to move them with exactly the right amount of moisture and friction to heighten the sensation. He knew how to nudge her lips apart with his tongue, how to dip inside and mimic the action his body wanted to enact inside hers. Desperately wanted to enact. With Ariah. With his wife.
Lowering his head, Pritchard took her mouth. Stunned, both by his action and his gentleness, she made no move to rebuff him. He deepened the kiss, the tip of his tongue running lightly around her mouth, and tracing the indentation between her lips. The way Bartholomew had often done before. Ariah's eyes drifted shut, letting her sink into the lovely memories buried but not forgotten within her heart. Desire burst inside her. A tongue slipped into her mouth, the same moment a hand found her breast and he moaned.
The flavor was wrong. The sound of the masculine moan was wrong. The touch on her breast was wrong. Her eyes flew open, and she jerked back her head. For a long second they stared at each other, panting as their bodies clamored for more. Then Pritchard leaped from the bed and ran to the door.
Pausing with his back to her, he said, "I-I don't know what got into me, Ariah. Please . . .I didn't mean to break our bargain. Forgive me."
He vanished into the hall, leaving the door ajar behind him.
Alone in the bed, Ariah listened to the click of his door shutting, then silence. Her heart was still pounding. She knew she should go to him, tell him there was no need to feel guilty for what happened. She should climb right into his bed and show him that she meant to keep the bargain they had made with the vows exchanged on their wedding day. But she couldn't.
Collapsing onto the pillows, she buried her face beneath her arm and cursed her stubborn love for Bartholomew. If only Pritchard would decide he did not want her. If only he would ask for an annulment. Lord knew, she hadn't the heart to ask him for one, though she knew it would be more honest.
In his room, Pritchard leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window and stared out into the black night, wishing Nettie were there to ease the ache in his groin.
What had happened in Ariah's room? He had gone in there determined to ask for an annulment so he could marry Nettie and keep his son from becoming a bastard. Had he lost his mind?
It was Nettie he wanted, wasn't it?
Nettie with her sweet, giving body, and her childlike worship of him. Nettie, the first woman who had ever made him feel truly wanted, truly a man. Of course it was her he wanted.
But Ariah was his wife. Ariah was educated, cultured, a real catch for a man from the backwoods of Kentucky, a man who could do barely more than to read and cipher. A man who . . .
He hadn't been completely honest with Ariah tonight. The main reason he had fled Kentucky was because he was a coward. No other man in Kentucky would have turned his back on a simple challenge that required nothing more of him than to fight with his fists. In his home town, brawling was a way of life to other men. But the thought of being struck, of suffering a broken nose or losing his teeth, of being hurt, terrified Pritchard. It made no sense, he knew that. He could suffer the same injuries playing baseball, but that seemed different somehow.
The reason his cowardliness hadn't been found out yet here was because of the lack of communication between Aunt Hester and the rest of his family back home. What he had told Ariah about coming here with the hope of learning from Uncle Bart how to be a man was true.
It simply hadn't happened.
But Nettie loved him anyway. Since meeting her, Pritchard had convinced himself he felt no desire for Ariah. She made him feel clumsy, stupid, and inadequate. With Nettie, he felt at home. But he knew how to enjoy a woman's body now. And tonight, he'd nearly had a chance to enjoy Ariah's. He wouldn't have humiliated himself the way he had on their wedding night.
Nettie might be carrying his baby. But did that have to mean he couldn't have her and Ariah? All he had to do was convince Nettie that Ariah wouldn't give him an annulment. He could say that Ariah had insisted instead that they consummate the marriage, right then, and that he'd had little choice but to give in. He would promise to keep coming to see Nettie, and to support her and their child. What more could she want? Nettie had been a whore, after all; she couldn't expect a decent man like him to actually marry her, could she?
♥ ♥ ♥
Bartholomew was avoiding her the way a rabbit avoids a hawk. Ariah was certain of it. He had taken over the care of the domestic animals at the station, thereby ensuring that he would not run into her while she milked cows or fed chickens. She had to content herself with a glimpse of him going or coming from the outbuildings, while she weeded the garden or watched from the windows of the house.
He had spoken less than a dozen words to her since the day of the funeral. Obviously, he did not want her attention. He cooked for himself, did his own laundry, cleaned his own house. Even her invitation to Easter supper, extended through Pritchard, came back with a polite refusal. His rejection of their friendship hurt Ariah more than she could bear, but she hid her pain in her preparations for the holiday.
Her mother's precious iconostasis, with its gold-etched image of the Virgin, was brought out from its sanctuary in Ariah's trunk and hung in the eastern corner of her bedroom. This part of the Easter tradition she would share with no one; it was too personal and seeped too thoroughly in sorrow.
Ariah did not cross herself in front of th
e iconostasis each morning and evening as her mother had, but she carefully unwrapped each of the items her mother had kept inside the small, glass-fronted, triangular, wooden box, and placed them exactly as Demetria had left them. A red easter egg, died by Demetria's own hand lay before the Virgin, and a brittle, dried sprig of laurel from the last Palm Sunday mass Demetria had attended in Greece so many years before. The tiny bottle of water blessed by the priest on that long-ago Epiphany was empty now, its contents evaporated, but Ariah gave it its honored place anyway.
Pritchard and Seamus were badgered into digging a pit where the lamb would be roasted over hot coals. She insisted the pit be placed between the two houses. Bartholomew might not attend her special supper, but he would at least smell the food and hear their laughter.
Special ingredients were ordered from Portland and her old Cincinnati neighborhood: Ouzo, a Greek liqueur her father had never learned to like; feta cheese; grape leaves; a rice-shaped pasta called orzo; rich Greek coffee; walnuts, almonds, pistachios, olives, figs and dates. The cooking began several days before Holy Saturday and required all of Ariah's concentration to prepare properly.
An entire day was spent making the special pastry needed for Baklava, cream puffs, fruit tarts, and other delicacies. The phyllo dough had to be rolled paper-thin, a difficult project for anybody, let alone someone as incompetent in the kitchen as Ariah. Several batches had to be thrown away but she finally managed one that satisfied her.
"Who you invitin', the whole town?" Seamus asked one afternoon while she painstakingly wrapped dabs of spinach and cheese in layer after layer of the special dough and lined them up like tin soldiers on a baking sheet.
Her floured hands went still and she stared first at him, then at the mound of kourabiethes, her favorite butter cookies, cooling in the window, trays of baklava waiting to be baked, eggplant she would make into a tart dip, and a mountain of hard-boiled eggs dyed a brilliant red to represent the blood of Christ. There would be enough for an entire town.
Pritchard burst into the warm, fragrant kitchen. When he reached for one of the cookies, she quelled the impulse to slap his hand away, and smiled instead.
"Pritchard, are you going into town tonight?"
He hadn't planned to, having put off his confrontation with Nettie, but since he hadn't found the courage to invade Ariah's bed yet either, he was feeling randy. "The fellows wanted to practice again, but I reminded them I'm a newlywed yet and need to spend some time at home. Why?"
She began wrapping another spoonful of spinach and cheese.
"I wondered if you would have time to stop over to Calvin's to invite them to Easter supper. It's short notice, with Easter being only two days away now, but Mrs. Goodman will be spending the holiday with her son, so Cal and the boys might enjoy a special supper here." She glanced up and added, "I'm hoping Bartholomew will join us. He's punished himself long enough for not discovering Hester's condition sooner."
Seamus lit his pipe and said, "Good idee."
"It might cheer Uncle Bart up to have some of his family here, all right," Pritchard added.
"Good. Ask Doctor Wills, too, and what do you think of inviting Reverend Ketcham and his wife?"
Pritchard licked powdered sugar and cookie crumbs from his fingers, frowning. "I think having them around would only remind Uncle Bart of the funeral. How about Max Hennifee from the Pickled Eye? He and Uncle Bart have always been good friends, and Max won't have anywhere else to go on Easter."
Ariah grimaced. "The Pickled Eye?"
"Saloon . . . near the dock," Seamus explained in his typically abbreviated manner.
"Oh. Well, invite him then. Four healthy male appetites should make a good dent in all I'll have prepared. Anyone else you can suggest?"
Pritchard munched another cookie while he considered. He might have invited Stuffy Simms and his wife, but there was too much risk of Ariah learning the truth about certain non-existent practice games. "No. I reckon most folks will be tied up with their own family doings."
"All right. Do you want something to eat before you go? Besides cookies, I mean," Ariah called as he headed out.
Halfway up the stairs, he yelled back, "No, thanks. I'll eat with Stuffy."
Seamus snorted and opened the back door. "Eat with Stuffy. My Aunt Clara's hind end!" he muttered as he went out to see to his goats.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Holy Saturday arrived, Ariah had no trouble keeping busy until the magic hour of midnight. As the evening waned, she imagined her mother working alongside her, reciting tales of Easter in the old country.
Everyone in Demetria's village would be crowding inside the Church of the Holy Trinity now, with unlit candles in their hands and anticipation in their hearts. The lights would soon be extinguished. At the stroke of twelve, the Royal Doors would be thrown open. Incense would curl around the white-vested priest as he emerged from the cryptlike silence of the darkened church, carrying a single lit candle.
"Come and receive the light," he would call, while bells pealed out the news that Christ had risen. Firecrackers would flare, hiss and explode in a shower of sparks. Joyous voices would shout.
"Khristos anesti," the priest would intone as the holy flame was passed from candle to candle. "Christ is risen." And the people would answer: "Alithos anesti, He is risen indeed."
Hands would shelter candles from the wind as worshippers strode home to mark a cross on their ceilings with the smoke in honor of another triumphant return from the dead.
Ariah had no holy flame, but she lit her own candle and placed it in Demetria's iconostasis, whispering the words to herself: Khristos anesti, Christ is risen.
Finally, Easter Sunday arrived.
The pit was ready. Good smells filled the kitchen and Ariah's spirits were higher than they had been since she fled Cincinnati. Only Bartholomew's participation in the day's activities could make the day better.
As soon as Pritchard relieved him from his watch that morning, Seamus departed for Tillamook to fetch Ariah's order from the fish market and to pick up the dressed-out lamb from Cal. After he left, Ariah went out to pick fresh garlic, celery, onions, tomatoes and parsley from the garden for the dishes that had yet to be cooked.
Bartholomew emerged from the barn. Holding her breath, she willed him to look her way, but when he did, it was only to stare for a moment before disappearing around the side of the barn. Ariah's shoulders sagged as she filled her lungs with air and tried to banish the pain of his unwarranted rejection.
Two weeks had passed since Hester's death and Bartholomew obviously hadn't yet come to terms with his guilt. She had shared that guilt until she faced the fact that his marriage had failed long before he met her. Had she never come to Oregon, nothing between Bartholomew and his wife would have changed. Hester would still be dead and he would still be condemning himself for not having loved her.
Frustration seethed inside Ariah. She wanted desperately to help him. What he was putting himself through now wasn't fair to him or anyone else who had to live with him here at the lighthouse station. It wasn't even fair to Ariah, though she accepted her blame for enticing him into acts that undoubtedly made him feel unfaithful to his dead wife. She understood his grief, but she also knew that punishing himself only worsened matters.
And she refused to allow it to ruin Easter.
Leaving her herbs and vegetables on the ground, she brushed off her apron and skirt and stalked toward the barn. She found him exactly where she'd expected to—in the pheasant pen. Without a moment's hesitation, she marched up to the door and let herself inside. "Bartholomew?"
Except for the stiffening of his back, he ignored her.
"Do you hate me so much, Bartholomew? Is it Hester's death you blame me for, or only your guilt?"
"I blame no one for her death . . .except myself."
"What nonsense. If anyone was to blame, it was Hester herself. Why do you insist on playing the villain?"
When he made no response, she grabbe
d his arm and forced him to face her. Eyes as hollow and ravaged as a beehive after a bear has been at it gazed down at her. His face had grown thin, accentuating the bluntness of his features and lending him a vulnerability she had never seen before.
Her voice softened as her fingertips moved lightly over that beloved face, longing to wipe the shadows from his soul.
"Oh, Bartholomew. How Hester must be laughing, to see you destroying yourself this way. Because of her."
He wrenched from her grasp and turned away. "She might not be dead, if not for me. I was her husband, for hell's sake. I saw her limping about the house. I knew she was suffering. Yet I never even bothered to determine the cause of her pain. I was too busy lusting after . . ."
He left the word unsaid, but she knew what he'd left out. "If you were lusting after me, it was no one's fault but Hester's."
He spun about, his eyes blazing. "What are you talking about? Damn it, she was my wife. I had no right to cast my eyes on another woman."
One more step and he would have tromped her into the manure-speckled earth, but she held her ground. Her face was as calm as his was ravaged, her voice soft and sure.
"She tricked you into marrying her, Bartholomew. She let you into her bed once, only to consummate the marriage so you couldn't have it annulled. She locked you from her room. What right has such a woman to complain if her husband turns to another woman? You gave her far more kindness than most men would have, and she knew it, in spite of her eternal nastiness."
Bartholomew jerked as though struck. "How did you know? I never told you any of that."
"She bragged of it, as if to dare me."
Ignoring his shocked expression, Ariah picked up a long barred tail feather and stroked it. "After hearing all that, how could any woman who loved you resist trying to make up to you for all Hester had put you through? How could she deny the woman the pleasure of catching her husband in sin so she could ruin his name, and elevate herself to the level of martyr when she forgave you? Once the trollop who had lured you into sin had been banished, of course."
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