Nora

by Diana Palmer

  “Being with child suits you,” he said quietly. “You look fragile and very pretty.”

  She curtsied pertly.

  He made a face at her and went out the door smiling.

  BREAKFAST, TO PUT IT MILDLY, was a complete disaster. Cal did light the stove for her before he went to check on the stock in the barn and corral, something he did at least twice a day because some sick animals were contained there.

  While he was gone, Nora whipped out the old cookbook she had been lent and tried desperately to make biscuits. The bacon was not too difficult, except that she burned one side trying to get it cooked enough. She was sweating and her hair was all in her face, which was streaked with flour like the blue-patterned dress she was wearing. It was a dress meant for the front parlor, not the kitchen, and it already showed the strain of the use it was being put to.

  She fried the eggs in the bacon grease, but splattered herself with popping grease. While she was concentrating on the painful splotches on her arms, the eggs grew darker and harder. By the time she took them up, they would have bounced if she had dropped them.

  It was a meal, of sorts, she consoled herself. Edible. Just. She put it all on the table, with the butter from the small icebox, and the jar of grape jelly that had been a gift from Helen.

  Cal’s nose wrinkled involuntarily at the burned smell of the cabin when he joined her in the small kitchen. He said grace and they prepared to eat.

  “I have made my first biscuits,” Nora said proudly.

  He lifted one without comment.

  “Here is the butter and the jelly,” she added, pushing both toward him.

  He took his knife and tried to open the biscuit. It proved more difficult than he had imagined. Nora stoically put butter on the outside of hers and tried to bite into it. She laid it on her plate without comment and prepared to eat her egg. But this was impossible. The sight of it covered in grease and staring up at her made her queasy. She ran for the back porch and barely made it in time.

  “Now, now,” he comforted, handing her his handkerchief, which he had wet from the pitcher on the washstand behind her. “That was my first reaction, too, but the eggs aren’t so bad. The bacon was a little crunchy, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

  She pressed the cloth to her mouth and looked up. “You haven’t mentioned the biscuits.”

  He grinned sheepishly. “Well, actually, I’m trying to forget about the biscuits.”

  She laughed, too, and her fears evaporated when he pulled her close to his side and kissed her unkempt hair.

  “You’re game, Nora,” he said proudly. “God, you’re game!”

  “I want only to please you.” She laid her head against his shoulder and stood content in the circle of his arm. “I shall try very hard to be a good wife, Cal. You must forgive me if I’m less than efficient, but I have a great deal to learn. This is…new to me.”

  He felt a terrible pang of guilt. She was pampered, and pregnant. He shouldn’t subject her to this sort of life. She deserved better.

  He wanted to take her to Latigo and introduce her to his family. He wanted to take her out of this cabin and into the sort of house she had a right to expect. But he couldn’t leave Chester in the lurch. And he couldn’t stop prospecting for oil when he’d put almost every cent he had into these last two lots and the rigs to use on them. Too much was riding on it. If he lost his gamble, he’d be living on Latigo charity for the rest of his life, and Nora with him. That would hurt his pride. King would inherit Latigo. Although there would be plenty of money left over to divide when their parents were no longer alive, Cal didn’t want the family fortune. He wanted to make his own.

  “You’re very quiet,” she remarked.

  He kissed her hair again. “I was thinking about something. I must go away this weekend.”

  She frowned as she looked up at him. “Where?”

  He smiled. “It’s my secret, for now.” He put his finger over her mouth. “It’s business, I assure you, not another woman.” He pulled her close. “You’re as much woman as I can handle,” he whispered at her ear, “and more.”

  She flushed with pleasure and nuzzled her face against his shirt. “I’ll ask Melly to drive me in to the doctor,” she promised.

  “Good girl.” He smiled at her wan, pale face. “Take care.”

  “I will.”

  She watched him go, thankful that he was patient and not demanding and sarcastic like her father. It boded well for their future that he did not expect too much of her.

  THE DOCTOR WAS KIND and she liked him at once. She told him about the fever and the slight bleeding—although she blushed profusely at having to admit how it had occurred—and her fears for her health.

  After he examined her, they sat in his office and he wore a solemn expression.

  “You must not exert yourself,” he said unexpectedly. “There is a weakness which is not uncommon in a woman of your build. It need not cause you any problems if you are careful. As to the fever,” he began, and hesitated. He took off his glasses. “There are many theories about how it is provoked. I favor fatigue as a causative agent. You must eat well, get enough rest and take special care not to become ill from any other cause. Even a simple cold might bring the fever again.”

  “Could it harm me? Could it threaten my child, I mean?” she asked uneasily.

  “It is possible,” he said. “I would like you to come back in a month to see me.”

  “Yes. Yes, I shall.”

  “If you have any difficulties, please do not hesitate to send for me.”

  She shook hands with him. “You are very kind.”

  DON’T EXERT YOURSELF. She heard the words echo in her mind over and over again in the days that followed. But how could she avoid it? There was water to fetch from the well and heavy pans to carry back and forth from the stove. There was bending and stooping as she tried to keep the cabin swept, and even the strain of getting into and out of the buggy. Before the week was over, she was exhausted.

  “Nora, can’t you manage to find me at least one clean shirt?” Cal grumbled as he slung dirty ones around the bedroom. “For God’s sake…!”

  “Here,” she said stiffly, presenting him with her first effort. She and Helen had washed the day before, and Nora had done her best to use the heated flatirons to produce something wearable. But she knew before he unfolded it that he was going to hit the ceiling. He did.

  “What…!” There were scorch marks all down the sleeves and on the back. It was a chambray shirt. She didn’t have the nerve to mention the white one she’d burned a hole through. She winced at his expression.

  “I was not employed as a personal maid!” she said with a trembling mouth. “You must make allowances for my background!”

  He breathed slowly, trying to hold back his temper. Burned breakfast, burned supper, unswept floors, and now scorched shirts.

  His mother was a wonderful cook, their home had always been immaculate, and she did her own washing and ironing as good or better than the Chinese laundry in El Paso. Nora was a complete failure at the simplest chores. She couldn’t even seem to remember to fill the pitcher with water so that he could wash his face and hands before meals. Her only virtue to date had been her delightful presence in his bed, but her pregnancy even denied him that consolation. Sleeping beside her and being unable to touch her made him as edgy as a sunburned snake.

  “I need a daily woman,” she said angrily. She pushed back wisps of unkempt hair. She was not at all neat these days, he thought irritably, hardly the picture of a bandbox beauty. Even that would not have rankled so had she been able to cook an edible meal.

  “I cannot afford a daily woman on my salary,” he lied. “And you spent your savings, I believe, on a new Paris hat at the milliner’s in town the day you went to see the doctor?”

  She colored. It had been an impulse, the new hat, something to cheer her up, but she was willing to admit that she should never have spent so much on something so unnecessary. “I am
sorry,” she murmured. “I have always spent what I pleased.”

  “That is at an end,” he said curtly. “From now on, before you spend one red cent, you ask me if we can afford it. Is that understood?”

  She glared at him. How was it possible to love and hate one man so much? Her teeth closed sharply. “When I was a lady of means, you would not have dared speak to me so!” she burst out.

  “Wouldn’t I?” His eyes gave her a pointed appraisal. “Whatever you may have been before we married, you are now the wife of a ranch foreman, and I hold the purse strings.”

  She stood breathing heavily, aware of her aching back and sore feet and hands that showed the ravages of unfamiliar labors. She wished she had the strength to lift the iron skillet on the wood stove above her head. She would have laid his skull open with it.

  He must have seen the light of battle in her eyes, because he smiled faintly. But a minute later, he shouldered into the burned shirt with visible resignation and reluctance and went to work.

  Thanksgiving came and went. Cal gave in when Helen pleaded for them to join the family for the special meal, for which Nora gave thanks. But it was only a one-day respite. The next day she was back to fighting eggs out of shells that came apart in her hands and trying to cut meat with too many bones. She felt terrible and looked it, and her fragile health was beginning to deteriorate under the double strain of her troubled marriage and the physical labor she was not used to performing.

  The beginnings of a cold caught her unawares, but she managed to get out of bed and make breakfast for Cal. It was a wasted effort. He gave her latest disaster one cold glare and stormed over to the bunkhouse to eat with his men, muttering all the way out the door about being stupid enough to marry a woman who couldn’t boil water. She cleared the food away without looking at it too closely. Her own appetite had faded to nothing, and she wasn’t eating properly or resting properly or feeling particularly well. She stopped trying to cook at all, settling for bread and vegetables and bits of meat that a sympathetic and worried Melly sneaked into the cabin.

  If Cal noticed, he never said a word. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to notice. He had started sleeping at the bunkhouse as well as eating there, because, he told everyone, he disturbed Nora, and she needed her rest.

  It was a good enough excuse, but she didn’t believe a word of it. She thought that he was really just avoiding the arguments that seemed to flare up over nothing these days as Nora’s health suffered and her temper reflected her dissatisfaction and discomfort. She hated her mercurial temper, but she couldn’t help it. She had a cold and she was afraid that the fever was going to catch her off balance. What would she do when Cal knew the truth, knew how she’d deceived him? He would see her as even more of a burden than she was. He hardly looked at her these days, as if the sight of her hurt his eyes.

  In fact, she did hurt his eyes. She didn’t know how desperately fragile she looked or how badly her new situation reflected on her. Cal felt guilty, more so by the day. He had moved to the bunkhouse to spare her the cooking and chores that she was unable to perform; and the arguments that did her no good at all.

  He had to go to Beaumont and check on Pike’s progress this weekend. He thought seriously about taking her on to El Paso afterward. He was ashamed of the way he’d treated her. Every day he blamed himself more for subjecting her to a life for which she was so obviously not suited. He had thought to teach her how to appreciate the person and not the social station, but he no longer had such ambitions. He had been impatient with her lack of skill in the house, unreasonably so. The strain of being near her and unable to touch her had worsened his temper, and her own was none too good lately. When he came back from Beaumont, he would do what he had to, to spare her any further ordeal. He had caused her enough heartache.

  Chapter Twelve

  IT DIDN’T SURPRISE NORA that Cal was anxious to get away Friday afternoon, on his mysterious business about which he told her nothing. She didn’t bother him with her minor aches and pains or the cold, much less what the doctor had said. He had become remote and almost unapproachable, and looked as if he had a great deal on his mind. She told herself to remember that at first he had been kind, overlooking her burned vegetables and meat and the disastrous biscuits she had continued to produce until he left to live in the bunkhouse.

  He came into the cabin late Friday in a suddenly cold humor, staying just long enough to pack his bag. He made no comment about his neatly folded shirts, at which she had achieved at least some level of proficiency by ironing gunny and flour sacks until she could do it without scorching or burning them, and only then putting the iron to his shirts. In fact, the sight of them made him feel guilty all over again, because he could imagine how much time she’d spent learning to iron so well.

  “Thank you,” he said stiffly.

  She shrugged. Conversation was difficult enough, and she felt unwell. She stifled a cough but gave in to a sneeze.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Dust,” she explained, and pulled a handkerchief from her apron pocket to dab at her red nose. “It is only dust.”

  He looked around him sadly at the thickness of it on the furniture. “Yes.”

  She glared at him. “I have enough to do without wasting time on the furniture. The dust only comes right back.”

  “As you say.” He wasn’t disposed to argue. She looked thinner than ever. “Are you eating?” he asked. “You must try. Are you certain that the doctor said you were all right?”

  “He said that I was fine,” she lied. “I do nothing really strenuous.”

  Blissfully unaware of what she had to do around the house, because he was out all day, he only nodded, placated. “Take care of yourself. I should be back Monday afternoon.”

  Her eyes were on the suitcase. “You packed your gun,” she said.

  He looked surprised. “I always pack my gun,” he said. “We are not as civilized as we like to believe. Men are robbed all the time.”

  She frowned. “What do you have that a robber would want?” she said without thinking.

  His eyes were suddenly cool. “I beg your pardon?”

  She flushed. “I mean…”

  “You still feel that you have married beneath you, don’t you?” he asked coolly. “I am a man of no means and not worth robbing, is that it?”

  She bit her lip. “Cal, you twist my words,” she said, her eyes pleading for understanding. “I am your wife. This is my lot, too, now, to live as ordinary people do. I am trying to adjust. Truly I am.”

  “But you hate it,” he said suddenly. “I have seen your eyes fall when we go to town, as if you are ashamed to have anyone see you with me. You go about doing chores here with the look of a martyred saint, because you were raised to believe that decent women did not work in the home. You are ashamed of your position here and ashamed to have me for a husband.”

  She ground her teeth together. “Please…!”

  “Imagine—Miss Marlowe of Richmond, married to a poor working cowboy with dirty boots,” he continued, his voice like a whip as he put all his stifled resentments into words. “To cap it all, your aunt stopped me on my way here and asked me if I couldn’t afford just a little daily help for you. Because, she said, a lady was hardly suited to such tedious physical labor, and you are having to depend on Melly for food that you can eat,” he added deliberately.

  She went red. “But I said nothing to her!” She protested her innocence. “Yes, Melly was kind enough to bring me a few things…. You moved out! Why should I cook only for myself! And I did not ask my aunt for a daily maid!”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “You certainly asked me, and I refused. If you did not ask your aunt to speak to me, perhaps she reads minds,” he said irritably. “You profess to love me, Nora, but both of us know that you will never be happy here. You have no household skills whatsoever. You haven’t the patience to accomplish anything in the kitchen. You want silk dresses and linen tablecloths, silver
and crystal and servants and all the right people to invite to Sunday dinner. You will never be satisfied with what I have to offer you here.”

  “I will be!” she said angrily.

  “Really?” His eyes narrowed on her face. “Then why did you ask your aunt to write your people a letter of apology?” he said finally, voicing the thing that had upset him the most.

  She gasped. “I did not!” she said, aghast at being accused of bowing down to her parents, after their cruel treatment of her. Whatever had her aunt been thinking, to tell Cal such a thing? If she thought to make him change his coolness toward Nora with such a prod, it had certainly misfired.

  “They are wealthy and you are their only child,” he continued with an unpleasant smile. “Well, let me tell you something. If you make it up with them, that’s all right, but don’t expect to ask them for anything—not for dresses or fripperies or cash. Because as long as you remain my wife, I won’t allow you to take one penny from your family!”

  She glared at him. Defending the charge was forgotten in the heat of renewed anger. “I’ll do what I please! I may be your wife, but you don’t own me! I can take care of myself perfectly well, and I was doing so until you seduced me into this…this…life of abject poverty! At least a man of my own station would not have expected me to cook and clean and work like a scullery maid!” she burst out in a feverish rush. She felt terribly warm. It was probably a little fever with her cold, she thought, but she felt so ill that she hardly knew what she was saying.

  He didn’t speak. His face closed up and his eyes narrowed. “Honest labor is no disgrace,” he said with cold pride. “I work with my hands and feel no dishonor for it, and my mother never complained about having to work in the house or cook and clean for her husband and three sons. In fact, she took pride in it. But if your family name and social position mean so much to you, then make it up with your father and go back to Richmond. God forbid that you should have to live like a scullery maid, Eleanor. Not for all the world would I demean you further.”