Her tone was low, but decided. “I don’t believe you.”
She shifted away from him, and her magnificent breasts jiggled their way to his attention. Surprisingly—he never remembered being quite this quick on the draw before—he felt himself stir. He offered his wife a lazy grin. “I’m telling you the truth, honey. C’mere, let me prove it to you.”
She stared at him, accusing, but still a little intrigued. Zach waited, willing her to move, speaking only with the look in his eyes. He must have convinced her, because ever so slowly, she leaned toward him, lifting her mouth for a kiss.
Sometime later, Morality said in a breathless voice, “Oh, my goodness, Zach. You’ve definitely made a believer out of me.”
THE STREETS of Cottonwood Creek were relatively quiet for mid-afternoon. Reverend Harrison looked all around, making sure he wasn’t being observed as he ducked into the Marston carriage house. Shadows advanced with the closing of the door, and he stared around the structure trying to make out another figure in the gloom. “Are you here?”
“Yes,” came the disembodied voice.
Excitement surged inside of Harrison. He was on the verge of the biggest take of his life and he felt almost giddy. “Is it safe to talk?”
“Do you have the diary?”
“Do you have the papers?” He heard the creak of buggy springs and realized his quarry was sitting in one of the carriages. He stepped toward it. “My note said I’d need to see the ownership papers first. I meant it. You’ll not get the book until I see my name on the documents.”
“On the barrel beside the door. A file.”
Harrison’s mouth split into a wide grin. He found the file and flipped it open. Rifling the papers inside, he struggled to make out the words in the murky light. Who’d have ever thought the little bitch’s disappearance would net him this type of reward? A riverboat. A damn riverboat!
Searching for better light, he turned toward the window, until he heard the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked. “What the hell—”
“The diary?”
“I’m not sure the papers are in order.”
“The papers are there. Give it up now, Harrison.”
Scowling, he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the leather-bound book. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Bring it to me.”
File clutched firmly in his hand, Harrison approached the carriage. He held out the diary, getting a glimpse of the blue-veined hand that reached out and grabbed the book away. “Pleasure doing business with you,” he said, backing carefully away, sensing that the gun was trained on him yet.
He didn’t draw a full breath until he’d left the Marston mansion behind. Then his grin returned full force, and he graciously tipped his hat to a passerby.
He’d have liked to satisfy himself that all was in order before handing over the diary, but he wasn’t too worried. If the Marstons had tried to double-cross him, he’d simply make it up the next time around.
Harrison wondered how long it would take them to notice that the letter had been removed from Sarah Burkett’s diary.
“I think I’ll call my boat the Miracle.”
DURING THE week following the wedding, Morality laughed more often than she had ever imagined possible. Her husband declared his intentions to entertain her, and he did so with a vengeance. He took her fishing. They picnicked on a bluff high above the Angelina River. He invited Mrs. Payne to teach her the fine points of baking, then remained at his wife’s side, helping her measure ingredients, telling both women stories about life in California, complimenting Morality on the results of her efforts.
When he sampled her biscuits, then declared them some of the best he’d ever tasted, Morality ran to him and kissed him. Zach took her spontaneous display as an offer and lifted her into his arms. Morality blushed in mortification as he asked Mrs. Payne to excuse them. He carted her off to the cabin and their bed, ignoring her halfhearted protests that he must cease this business of sweeping her off her feet.
Truth be told, she secretly enjoyed the attention, both in the marriage bed and out. Except for the occasional worries about Patrick and Reverend Uncle, she was the happiest she’d been in her entire life.
Zach kept his promise about regular relations, and other than a bit of soreness early in the week, she’d found nothing but pleasure in his arms. While she continued to suffer tugs of embarrassment at the beginning of their lovemaking, it seldom lasted longer than the first few kisses or caresses.
Eight days after their wedding, Morality awoke shortly after dawn to a symphony of birdsong and the honied scent of spring. She stretched languidly, feeling good enough to purr. Her body still hummed with the glow from Zach Burkett’s midnight loving.
“Mmm, mornin’, angel.” Zach’s hand stroked the curve of her naked thigh. “I wish you wouldn’t squirm that way. Makes me fret over what I want for breakfast. Eggs and ham.” He rolled above her. “Or you.”
Morality made his decision for him.
Two hours later they finally got around to breakfast. Despite her mostly successful efforts at learning to cook, Morality admitted she had yet to manage the preparation of a decent cup of coffee. Thus, she went up to the inn for eggs while he set to work in the kitchen. Upon her return, the aroma of boiling coffee and frying ham filled the air and stirred her appetite. The sight of her broad-shouldered husband sipping reverently at a cup of coffee made her smile.
He was such a handsome man.
“Guess what, Zach?” she asked, checking the contents of the skillet.
“Martha’s hens have teeth?”
She smiled. “No, but I think that rooster of hers might. That bird tried to chase me!”
Zach shook his head. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least. He is a cock, after all.”
Morality tilted her head and watched him. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what again?” He flipped the ham in the skillet.
“You get this look in your eyes. It happens every time you say something I suspect has a different meaning to you than it does to me.”
“Now, Morality.” He lifted his shoulders innocently. “All I’m saying is that a rooster is a male bird. It’s his job to protect the nests. He was doing his job, something the hens should be doing but don’t.”
Her mouth fell open. “If that’s not pure nonsense. You sound as if you’d never seen a barnyard before in your life, and I know better than that.”
He dimpled at her reaction. “Face it, woman. Roosters are superior to hens.”
She snorted. “You’re showing your ignorance, Burkett. After all, roosters crow.” She sashayed over to him and deposited an egg in his shirt pocket. “But hens deliver.”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” he murmured, pulling her against him. He took her mouth in a brief but thorough kiss. When it was done, they looked at one another, at the smashed egg dripping from his shirt pocket, and broke into a laugh.
As they sat down to breakfast, Zach took a sip of coffee and asked, “What bee did you have in your bonnet when you came in, angel?”
“Oh, you do have a way of making me forget things, Burkett,” she said, thumping her head with her fingers. “Martha gave me the most wonderful news. There’s a circuit rider due at a schoolhouse just an hour’s ride from here.”
“So?”
Her look brimmed with exasperation. “You’ve lost track, haven’t you? Today is Sunday, Zach. Martha’s going with us. We need to hurry if we’re going to make it to service on time.”
“Service?”
“Martha thinks it’s the Baptist preacher’s turn. He rotates with a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and an Anglican priest. There’s a service once a week, so each denomination is represented once a month. I do hope the Baptist minister is there. After missing services for this long, I feel the need for a good Baptist sermon.”
Zach stuck a forkful of eggs in his mouth to keep from speaking his thoughts aloud. Good Lord. Just what sort of woman was he
married to?
THE BENCH was so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it. Zach shifted uncomfortably in his seat and ignored the drone of the preacher, not an easy task considering the nasal quality to the man’s voice. Martha Payne sat one bench ahead of him and Morality, and he glared at the back of her head for subjecting him to this torture.
Morality caught him checking his pocket watch and frowned a reprimand. He replied with the most innocent of expressions, then followed that with a rakish waggle of brow. She fought a grin and lost, giving Zach a definite sense of achievement.
He played foot games with her throughout the rest of the sermon, to her obvious annoyance and undeniable entertainment. Zach stood and added his voice to the post-sermon hymn. While she sang:
“Shout! Shout! We’re gaining ground
Oh Halley, Hallelujah!
The love of God is coming down
Oh Halley, Hallelujah!”
Zach crooned a verse traditionally offered by hooligan boys outside the revival tent:
“My uncle had an old red hound
He called her Lots o’ Luck!
When uncle was lonely and feelin’ down
He gave that dog—”
Morality gouged him with her elbow and stomped on his foot. The next song he sang the proper words. By the end of the interminably long service, he was beginning to second-guess his decision on how to secure Cottonwood Creek’s support for his schemes. Declaring himself a religious man and marrying the Miracle Girl meant he’d have to endure this torture on a near weekly basis. His backside would never be the same.
Zach stood off from the others as Martha and Morality met and spoke with the ladies of the small congregation following the service. His wife appeared happy as a two-tailed pup. Spiritually rejuvenated and physically replete, she sounded ready to take on the world—or at least the ladies of Gaines Bend Church-of-the-Week.
Despite being a visitor, she jumped right in and helped the women with plans to “pound the preacher” the following week. The Presbyterian minister was retiring from the circuit to farm and devote himself to teaching the Lord’s ways to his own family, that consisting of a young wife and a newborn son. The ladies decided just who would bring what to the surprise donation party scheduled to begin immediately after the service. Everything from a ham, to a sack of meal, to a jug of syrup, to embroidered tea towels were offered.
“My uncle has been honored by a pounding a number of times,” Morality told the women. “I must tell you it’s a wonderful feeling to be gifted with such an outpouring of care and support from those to whom one ministers.”
Zach snorted. That uncle of hers deserved a pounding, all right, but feeling wonderful had nothing to do with it.
Watching his wife mingle with the small congregation, it occurred to him that she seldom, if ever, enjoyed a social situation without her gregarious uncle’s depressing presence. Talk turned to her “miracle,” and for the first time he heard her speak personally, away from the emotionally charged atmosphere of the revival meeting, about the restoration of her sight.
Outside this little log-cabin schoolhouse nestled among the East Texas pines, Zach observed and listened to the real Morality. And it needled at him like a grass burr in his socks.
He’d known from early on that Morality’s religion wasn’t just another part of her uncle’s act. He’d recognized that she believed in her “miracle.” The way Zach figured it, her temporary blindness undoubtedly had a logical, scientific cause. Man simply hadn’t gotten around to figuring out how it all worked yet. Of course, knowing Morality, he could show her documented proof from the world of science, and she’d still think she’d had a miracle. Until seeing her in action this morning, he’d never understood just how deeply ran the rivers of her beliefs.
Morality’s religion was far more than an abstract conception of a relationship with a God. It was a vital, living thing, an ever-present light in her life that guided her feet along every path she took. In the week they’d been married he’d often watched her pray. She sought solace from her worries and gave thanks for her joys. Her faith was as simple as it was strong. Despite the influence of ol’ Reverend Rake- It-In, she’d become a True Believer.
He studied her. The brilliant fire in her hair, the happy glow in her eyes, the aura of contentedness surrounding her, Morality Burkett was beautiful, inside and out. She not only preached the Golden Rule, she lived it. God, the woman was so naïve she made his teeth hurt.
And she also made him feel lower than wagon ruts. He was bound to hurt her and hurt her bad. Reckon there was a special room in hell for men like himself. He was liable to have to share it with her uncle.
As the crowd broke up, he took Morality’s elbow and escorted her to their buggy. She and Martha chatted happily about inconsequential subjects all the way back to Gallagher’s. There the two women adjourned to the inn’s kitchen to prepare Sunday dinner, a meal the newlyweds would share with their hosts.
Zach was strangely subdued as he unhitched the horses. Somewhere, deep within himself, he wondered how he might be different had his prayer been heard that violent spring day so many years ago.
God only knew.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MR. JESSE GRIMES TANNER was due to arrive on the two o’clock stage, which, according to Daniel Gallagher, usually arrived sometime after three-thirty. Morality spent the morning in nervous preparation. She bathed and washed her hair, then spent an entire hour trying to decide which of her new dresses to wear. She finally chose the yellow gingham. When Zach had gifted her with the trio of brightly colored dresses, he had mentioned he chose the yellow because it reminded him of the sunshine in her smile.
Morality figured she’d need a reminder to smile. She was scared. She wished desperately to make a good impression on Jess Tanner.
He was more than Zach’s business partner, he was her husband’s friend. As a railroad magnate’s son, Jess Tanner was bound to be a man of the world. She imagined he escorted refined debutantes to glittering society balls nearly every evening in his native New Orleans. He’d see her for the unsophisticated, provincial woman she was, and that was bound to embarrass Zach.
Morality cringed at the idea. The last thing in the world she wanted was to embarrass the man who, in effect, had been forced to marry her.
Ready far too early and frightfully nervous, she had volunteered to help Martha with preparations for that evening’s meal. For the past twenty minutes she had sat shelling peas at a table in Martha Payne’s kitchen.
Snap and pull. Snap and pull. Morality found the repetitive work soothing—until she looked down at her bowls and noticed she’d mixed up her pods with her peas. “The story of my life,” she grumbled beneath her breath.
She probably worried over nothing. After all, if Mr. Tanner were a real friend of Zach’s he wouldn’t be too stuffy. Zach Burkett didn’t care for stuffy. He might at times play with conviction the role of urbane gentleman, but living with the man had given Morality insight into his real nature. Despite his wealth and his ability to feel at home with any crowd, he seemed to prefer the simple to the complicated, a relaxed way of life as opposed to the rules and strictures of society. In other words, Zach Burkett was a homespun man at heart.
A homespun man who was looking for a home.
Morality’s thoughts wandered to the Cottonwood Creek cabin. She’d plant roses and maybe a magnolia tree near the bedroom window. She smiled dreamily at the idea of lying with Zach on a warm summer night with the heavy perfume of a magnolia blossom drifting through the open window.
Eventually, Martha took a look at Morality’s mangled, mixed-up peas and shooed her from the kitchen.
It was ten after four when the stage finally clattered into the yard. Morality stood at her husband’s side, nervously plaiting her fingers through the folds of her skirt as she waited for Mr. Tanner to disembark.
Jess Tanner was a pleasant-looking man, smaller than Zach, with sandy-colored hair and mustache. A pair of round wire-
rimmed spectacles magnified the intelligence reflected in his brown eyes. As the two men shook hands in greeting, they shared a look that spoke of friendship strongly forged.
The light in Mr. Tanner’s eyes altered perceptibly when Zach introduced her as his wife. For a moment, he stood frozen, obviously shocked. Then, throwing Zach a look of surprise that made Morality blush, he bowed over her hand and said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Burkett. I always knew when Zachary decided to settle down he’d find a beauty.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tanner,” Morality replied. “My husband has spoken of you often. I’m pleased for the opportunity to meet you.”
“We always like to capitalize on our opportunities, don’t we, wife?” Zach put his arm around her waist and said to Tanner, “My wife is not only beautiful, Jess, she’s famous, too.”
Tanner’s brow arched and Zach explained. “I first met Morality at her uncle’s revival meeting. You may have read about her in the newspapers. She’s called the Miracle Girl, and she has taken Cottonwood Creek by storm.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yep. Morality was cured of blindness by a miracle. The townsfolk think she walks on water.” He smiled down at her as he added, “I do, too.”
Tanner nodded, looking as if some great mystery had been solved. It left Morality feeling a tad uncomfortable, but she couldn’t say precisely why.
Her questionable cooking skills ever on her mind, Morality convinced her husband that dinner that evening should be eaten up at the inn. The meal proved to be a lively affair with Zach arguing politics with both Daniel Gallagher and Tanner. Even Martha and Johnny Kincaid joined in the debate, and eventually Morality felt comfortable enough to offer an opinion or two of her own. It was quite a change from previous experience, when Reverend Uncle disapproved of her having an opinion, much less expressing it.
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