The Paper Marriage

by Bronwyn Williams

  She was a puzzling woman, all right. For all she seemed to be so prim and proper, she could laugh at two old sailors’ crude attempts at humor. She could even laugh at herself, a trait rare enough in anyone, man or woman.

  She was unfailingly cheerful. She’d gone out of her way to be helpful right from the first, even though he suspected she’d never done a lick of work before in her life. Strangest of all, though, was her reaction when he came upon her suddenly, catching her by surprise. At first he’d put it down to shyness, but it was more like fear. Just yesterday he had reached out to brush away a green-head fly before it could land on her cheek, and you’d have thought he’d been about to deck her.

  Strange woman. Still, she’d promised to look after Annie, and as long as she kept her word, he wasn’t about to rock the boat. If she had no better sense than to stay out in the sun until she was burnt to a crisp and speckled with mosquito bites, that was her problem, not his. As long as Annie didn’t suffer the same fate. So far, the woman had done what she’d said she would do, which was all he required of any woman.

  Not all, perhaps, but it was definitely all he required of Primrose.

  Surrounded by swarms of pesky insects attracted to the scent of sweat, Matt stripped off his shirt, used it to wipe his face, then tossed it aside. He wondered how her highness was faring up on her hill, battling ticks and mosquitoes and all the other predators. By the time blackfly season arrived, she’d be long gone. With any luck at all, his wife would be in residence and he’d be outward bound for the West Indies aboard the Black Swan.

  Rose waved one hand languidly to shoo away the buzzing insects that swarmed by the millions now that the wind had finally stopped blowing. She had covered Annie’s basket with a length of wedding veil that she’d ruthlessly hacked free of the headdress. It had been crushed in the bottom of her trunk, kept as a reminder—as if she needed one—of the folly of indulging in romantic dreams.

  “No, sugar, you don’t want to kick it off,” she said when Annie fussed and waved her tiny feet and fists at the lace-encrusted netting. “I know it’s a nuisance, but some of these wretched bugs are big enough to carry you off.” If she’d thought of it, she might have draped the rest of the veil over her own face. As it was, she’d be scratching for days, even after bathing in baking soda and oatmeal water. But even with the heat, the humidity and hordes of mosquitoes, she felt more at peace than she ever remembered feeling in her entire life.

  Part of it, she’d finally concluded, was the constant sound of water lapping against the shore. Even on the calmest day she could hear it, soothing as any lullaby. To think that not long ago being on that very same water had made her so miserably ill she hadn’t cared whether she lived or died.

  Wonders never ceased, she thought idly, digging a finger under the neckline of her gown to scratch at a heat rash. She’d left off her corset and all but the bare minimum of undergarments, but that didn’t keep her from perspiring. Of course, summer in town had been even warmer, especially as ladies had to be swaddled to within an inch of their lives before they dared set foot out the door.

  “You know what, Annie? Nine-tenths of the rules society lives by, I’m firmly convinced, are pure balderdash. Whoever decreed any such nonsense has no more brains than a bowl of suet.”

  From her lofty perch on a hill that was no more than ten feet above sea level, she gazed around her. Having come from a society where rules were strictly imposed on every blessed thing, right down to the garden plants, she had come to appreciate this wild, unplanned beauty. Here it was nature and not the lopping pruners of some landscape artist that sculpted the trees. Here, nature decreed where each flower grew, and did a better job of it than any gardener.

  She caught sight of Luther, who had gone from working with the horses to doing something with the net. A nice-looking young man, he was always busy, always cheerful, fishing or helping out with the wash, stacking firewood or tickling Annie’s feet with a feather—or trying to talk Matthew into letting him ride into the village.

  Matthew. The harder she tried not to think of the man, the more impossible it was not to. Impossible to believe he was her husband. Even more impossible to imagine telling him so. There was no way on earth she could pass it off as a joke, not after all this time. Oops, I forgot to tell you, I’m the woman you married.

  Merciful heavens, he would eat her alive.

  He was always scowling, as if he bore the weight of the world on his back. From this distance she couldn’t make out his expression, but he was probably scowling even now as he chopped firewood out behind the house. She didn’t have to see him to imagine the sheen of sweat on his naked back and the way those tight-fitting trousers cupped him in a thoroughly indecent manner. In any civilized society, a man would be arrested for going about half naked in public.

  And a woman, she admitted with wry amusement, could probably get herself arrested for thinking the things she was thinking. She of all people should know better.

  But even knowing better, she couldn’t halt her wayward thoughts. She’d never been exposed to such blatant masculinity. Yet there was so much more to the man.

  She never should have married him in the first place, much less come here under false pretenses. But she’d been fresh out of options, and Bess had convinced her it would all work out for the best, even the trial period.

  Rose had squared it with her own conscience by telling herself that as Mrs. Littlefield, she would uphold her end of the bargain by looking after his baby. Once she was certain she hadn’t made another mistake, she and the captain could discuss an arrangement whereby she would stay on and he could go back to sea and they could both ignore the silly marriage thing.

  But no matter how reasonable it had seemed at the time—and to tell the truth, it hadn’t seemed all that reasonable, even then—it simply wasn’t working. She loved Annie—who wouldn’t love a baby?

  The trouble was Matt. She couldn’t seem to talk to him, and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk to her. The man had once commanded his own ship, which meant he couldn’t be entirely brainless, so the fault must lie with her.

  On the other hand, she mused, Bess said he’d sold his ship and had been trying ever since to buy it back, which didn’t seem particularly intelligent, so perhaps they were equally to blame.

  But she was the one with a guilty conscience, and before they could come to any sort of an agreement, she was going to have to confess. The trouble was, every time she plucked up her nerve to do it, he walked away. He had a way of looking at her as if he could read the thoughts in her head. Then, without a word, he would turn and walk off.

  As often as not he would whistle up that half-wild stallion of his, leaving her to stew in her own guilty feelings. She would watch him racing bareback over the dunes, his crow-black hair flying in the wind. And heaven help her, she envied him his freedom.

  She had gone over and over the words in her mind, preparing for the time when courage and opportunity coincided. Captain Powers, sir, I believe I might have unintentionally—

  There was nothing unintentional about it. She had deliberately deceived the man.

  Matthew, if you could spare me a moment, I would like to clear my conscience by admitting to a small deception.

  No matter how many times she rehearsed the words there was no easy way to tell a man that the woman he’d married in good faith was too cowardly to confess her own identity for fear he wouldn’t like her, for fear he would be angry enough to hurt her, for fear she had finally burned one bridge too many behind her.

  “I’m going to tell him, Annie, you just see if I don’t. Today or tomorrow—definitely by the end of the week. Definitely.”

  He wasn’t a violent man, else she would’ve seen signs of it before now.

  But then, Robert had given her no hint of his true nature in the first months of their marriage. Or perhaps the signs had been there, but she’d been too inexperienced to recognize them, too grateful that any man had wanted her.

 
; Matt hadn’t wanted her. He’d made no bones about that. But he needed her, and that was a beginning. “He loves you, sugar,” she murmured. “He might not realize it, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you when he thinks no one’s around. Did you know he tiptoes through my bedroom when he thinks I’m asleep to go and stand over your cradle?”

  Rose had fallen into the habit of talking to Annie because there were matters she couldn’t discuss with the men and she didn’t quite trust Bess not to use her confidences in one of her essays. Annie was the perfect listener.

  Jiggling the basket, she said, “So whatever he might think of me, he needs me to take care of you.” She plucked the thin fabric of her shirtwaist away from her throat, torn between doubts and determination. “The trouble is, he doesn’t trust women any more than I trust men, and that’s hardly a promising basis for any relationship, even a paper one.” She broke off to dig a thumb into the small of her back. “The truth is, it’s my own judgment I don’t trust. If there’s a choice to be made, I’ll invariably make the wrong one. Know what? The first thing I’m going to teach you, Annie dumpling, is to make smart choices. With a brand-new century right around the corner, women are going to be allowed all sorts of freedoms my generation was never permitted. We’re going to teach you to think things through before you reach a decision.”

  Gathering up the shoes and stockings she’d removed so as to curl her toes into the soft sand, Rose continued the one-sided conversation. “I was taught how to dress properly for the occasion, never mind that I looked awful in ruffles and pastels. I was taught to use the proper fork, to smile and utter the appropriate inanities at the appropriate time, but you see, no one ever thought to teach me to use my brain. When my world came crashing down, I was left to fend for myself, and a wretched job I made of it, I assure you.”

  In her basket, Annie blinked sleepily and blew a bubble. Rose picked a sandspur from her stocking, shook out the sand, and began putting herself together for the return home.

  “Thinks he hung the moon,” she grunted, leaning over to lace her high-tops. “Know what I think? I don’t think he hung the moon at all. And do you know what else I think? I think your father is too—he’s too everything. Too big, too stern, too masculine. Of course you’re in no position to realize it, but he’s also entirely too attractive. And if you ever tell a living soul I said that, I’ll deny it.”

  Annie was sound asleep. Without even feeling the least bit foolish—another freedom she had recently discovered—Rose stood, brushed the sand from her skirt and her hands, gathered up the heavy basket and began picking her way carefully across the sand. Luther had carried it up the hill for her. He’d been so sweet lately she was afraid he was getting a crush on her, which was flattering even though she knew it was only because he missed his friend, Billy, and missed being able to socialize with the young ladies in the village.

  “I’ll tell you something else, Annie. In spite of the pesky bugs and the grit that gets into everything, I love it here. I feel like a new woman. I don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations, because I’m not Marcus and Aurelia Littlefield’s daughter, I’m not Robert Magruder’s wife—I’m not even Granny’s granddaughter. I’m just me. Annie’s friend Rose.”

  Annie’s sleepy response was predictably ambiguous, but Rose nodded complacently. “I knew you’d understand.”

  Castles in the air, her father had called the elaborate fantasies she’d constructed as a child. Evidently, she hadn’t lost the knack. “So what do you think, should I stay? I’m not eager to go back to boarding houses that smell of cabbage, or job interviews where I’m always found wanting. Most particularly, I’m not at all eager to set foot on another boat. If I stay here, your father can get his ship back and go to sea again, you and I can have the place to ourselves and I’ll teach you everything I know about being an independent woman.”

  Sliding downhill through the soft sand was almost as strenuous as climbing. Rose was puffing by the time she reached the bottom of the ridge. Shifting the basket to the other hand, she set out for the house, thinking of the cool, shadowy rooms and a tall tumbler of cold lemonade.

  That was when she caught sight of the bare-chested giant, swinging the ax with a strength that should have frightened her, yet, oddly enough, didn’t. “We’re going to have to tell him soon, Annie. I’ll do it, I promise you, but not just yet.”

  She’d come a long way from the timid creature who had accepted the very first marriage proposal she’d ever received little more than a month after both her parents had been killed. Like a vine whose tree had suddenly been chopped down, she’d desperately needed something to cling to when Robert had appeared on the scene.

  Bess greeted her at the front door. “Well? Have you decided yet? I can’t stay here forever, you know.”

  “Shh, Annie’s sleeping. Let me change her and get her settled.”

  Bess followed her down the hall, and Rose said, “Bess, I haven’t quite made up my mind. I’m almost sure I want to stay, but I need to discuss it with Matt. Things have gone on so long now that I don’t quite know how to tell him. Why don’t you tell him for me?” Now that Bess was ready to leave, it was rush, rush, rush. The least she could do, Rose thought, was help her out of the mess they’d created between them.

  “Not my place to tell him. Want to know how I learned to swim?”

  “Not particularly.” Rose had long since ceased to wonder at the twists and turns of a writer’s mind.

  “Sink or swim, that’s how. Papa tossed me over the side and I started kicking and paddling. I was four years old at the time.”

  A likely story, Rose thought. “I need to put Annie to bed and tend to my bites. We’ll talk later.”

  Matt couldn’t sleep. He read far into the night and couldn’t have said what it was he’d read. It wasn’t the woman, although for reasons he couldn’t fathom he wasted far too many hours thinking about her. Because she was here, was all he could figure. Having a woman in his house was disrupting.

  Crank’s cooking had improved slightly since she’d been here. Despite his stiff fingers, Peg built things for her. Luther followed her around like a lovesick hound. If it hadn’t been so damned disgusting, it would’ve been funny. The woman wasn’t even good-looking.

  Not downright homely, just plain as a cold biscuit.

  And prissy. Prim as a Sunday school teacher. Always bringing in jars full of weeds, plunking them down on tables and windowsills. Next thing, she’d be wanting to hang lace curtains on his windows.

  But tonight, it was neither the woman nor the jug of flowers on the table at supper, nor even the sound of her singing to Annie. It was the weather. The air was too still. The seas were no heavier than usual, but now and then a hollow wave cracked down with a report sharp as gunfire. Thunder rumbled sullenly in the distance, like an angry beast circling the island.

  Even as he watched, lightning lit up the bank of clouds that had obscured the sunset, like glowing coals seen through thick smoke. Soon, the flashes grew sharper, the intervals between them shorter. When a jagged bolt streaked through the sky, he counted off three seconds before thunder rattled the windows in their frames.

  God, he loved it. The smell of it in the air, the feel of it in the very marrow of his bones. Hurricanes meant hard work, ashore or at sea. In an electrical storm there was little a man could do except savor being alive.

  He wondered if she felt it, too.

  By now she was probably cowering under her bed.

  When a hard gust of wind hit the side of the house, Matt closed his book and gave up all pretense of reading. Rising, he made his way silently through the dark house. He opened Peg’s door, nodded to the old man, and asked quietly, “All secure?”

  “All secure, Cap’n.”

  Luther was snoring. The boy had worn himself out today, what with hauling out the boat, taking up the net and waiting hand and foot on Her Highness. For all his youth, he was a sound man, surprisingly mature in some ways.

  As fo
r Crank, after downing enough rheumatism medicine to take the edge off his various aches, he would sleep through anything.

  Still with that restless feeling, Matt hesitated outside Bess’s door, wondering if he should go in and shut her window. By now she’d be too brandied up to notice if her bed floated off down the sound. Did she think he didn’t know about her nightly cigar and her two or three teacups of brandy?

  More likely, she knew he knew and simply didn’t give a damn.

  He went in and lowered her window, leaving only a strip at the top for air, then silently moved to the next door down the hall. Annie didn’t like loud noises. If she was awake, he would take her into his own room. He didn’t mind holding her until she fell asleep again, as long as no one was around. When a man made a fool of himself over a female, even a pint-sized female like Annie, the last thing he needed was an audience.

  She was sound asleep, belly down, butt in the air. For a long time he stood and gazed down at the small mortal who had so unexpectedly come into his life. He felt a stirring deep in his gut that no amount of baking soda could ease.

  After carefully removing a jug of yellow flowers from her windowsill, he shut her window. “Sleep tight, little princess. Uncle Matthew won’t let anything hurt you.”

  To get to Annie he’d had to go through Rose’s bedroom. He’d tried not to look. On the way back, tiptoeing through the darkness, he made the mistake of looking. He had almost reached the door when lightning flashed, followed almost immediately by a blast of thunder. Hearing a sound from the bed, he glanced over his shoulder, then wished he hadn’t.

  She was sitting bolt upright in her bed, staring blindly ahead. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just checking on Annie. Are you all right?”