For Her Honor: The Gentrys of Paradise

by Holly Bush

  * * *

  EMMALINE HADN’T LEFT. Adam was surprised when he came back from the stables late in the evening and found her at the small desk in the main room, her carpet bag sitting near the settee. He stood looking at her for quite some time. Her hair was coming down on one side of her head and one sleeve of her shirt was rolled up and one rolled down and still buttoned at the cuff. One shoe was lying on its side, presumably toed off as she walked to the desk, the other, out of sight. Was that a stocking draped over the back of her chair? His mother and sister were always neat and put together, even when doing heavy or hot chores. Emmaline looked as if a strong wind had blown by, rearranging her clothing and hair and she hadn’t the slightest inclination to set herself to rights. She was talking softly to herself. He wondered what she was concentrating on so intently, her pen scratching away on a paper in front of her, other sheets scattered around her feet on the floor.

  She was nothing like the always perfectly groomed Josephine, but he couldn’t deny that she was incredibly appealing to him in her disorder, and what a strange thought to have about his young wife. The one he’d kissed as if she were a saloon girl as she’d run her leg up his side.

  “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

  She turned around in her seat and looked at him and then past him, out the window. “Oh. What time is it? It’s almost dark out. I think Jenny came in and lit the lamps.”

  “She would have.”

  She hurriedly stacked her sheets of paper into a pile, bending over to gather up the ones on the floor and throw them into the fireplace. He wanted to ask her what she was doing. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t left. He wanted to tell her he was glad she was still here.

  “I’m going to the kitchen to see if there is anything in the icebox to eat after I wash up. Are you hungry?”

  She stood then and looked at him. “Is that blood on your shirt?”

  He nodded. “I’ve been helping George with the foals.”

  “Ah.”

  “Would you like me to call for the carriage? I will, if you’d prefer to go back to your mother’s this evening.”

  She shook her head. “No. Not unless you want me to.”

  “I don’t. I’m glad you’ve stayed. For however long,” he said and thought he was telling the truth.

  “I could eat more of those rolls and that turkey, and I never did have a slice of cake.” She tilted her head and smiled.

  Her grin gut-punched him. There were just no formalities where she was concerned. No flirting words or coquettish reluctance when it came to food or her state of dress or anything really. She was just Emmaline. This was what Jim had been talking about. She would have a difficult time with a husband who was rigid in his rules for marriage and wifely duties and attitudes. And what were his expectations now that that thought occurred to him? What did he want from her? From this union? He didn’t think any of his prior notions would stand up to this marriage. If it was to work, and the more he thought about that kiss, the more he was convinced that their marriage deserved a chance, he needed to open his mind to new possibilities.

  He found her in the kitchen drinking a glass of tea, her head titled back, her eyes closed as if she was parched.

  “That is so delicious, and I was so thirsty. Would you like some?” she asked as she filled her glass from the pitcher on the table and handed it to him.

  “I can get my own glass, Emmaline. This is yours.”

  She shrugged. “There’ll be less dishes for us to wash if we share.”

  He took the glass and drank from it, feeling as if there was some odd intimacy at play. He watched her unwrap a turkey leg and put it on a plate beside the butter and a few rolls. She sat down without looking at him and cut the leg in several places making it easy to pull the meat off with her fingers. She looked up at him.

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat. She was not unmannerly. She was taking small bites and chewing and wiping her fingers on the towel she’d placed between them. She was just not as formal as he was accustomed to. She knew how to act at a dining room table. He’d seen her do just that with refined manners.

  “I’m trying to remember the last time I sat at this table,” he said. “It’s been years.”

  “We all sat around the kitchen table in the mornings at my house. Mother didn’t of course, she took her warmed chocolate in her rooms. Father would lean against the stove and drink his coffee and we would chatter about school or what we’d be doing that day. Helen would dip out the porridge or grill bread with honey and we would drink cold milk.”

  “We ate our meals in a small dining room that was part of this kitchen until Mother had the formal dining room built. But this little two-seat table has been here forever, I think since Mother and Father moved here. They had coffee together at this table in the afternoons most days. Matt and I would sit here when Mabel was baking, and Livie, too, when she was old enough, hoping for a treat.”

  “Did Mabel ever disappoint?”

  “Never.”

  She smiled. “All and all, I had a lovely childhood. I think you did, too.”

  “I did. Father was strict about some things, our work with the horses or helping Mother, but he was just as likely to be dancing a jig in the middle of the barns. He was a happy and passionate man. Quick to do his share and just as quick to tell a silly story. Matt reminds me of him.”

  “I remember watching him at our house one holiday party, I was ten or so, I suppose.” She looked at Adam. “He was so obviously and completely enamored with your mother. Nettie and I watched them from where we sat on the staircase and Nettie, she was maybe thirteen and just becoming interested in boys, said that her husband was going to look at her like your father looked at your mother. He’d stared at her and smiled, touching her back or holding her hand, and looking around the room as if to say he was the luckiest man on earth.”

  “Nettie married the right man, then,” Adam said with a chuckle. “John has been watching her since he was thirteen, just about the time he started noticing girls.”

  “They are perfect together. What other man could live with Nettie and not kill her?”

  Adam laughed out loud. “I’ve always liked Nettie and Jim. I don’t know your younger sisters and brothers very well at all. Maybe I’ll get to know them a bit better now.”

  Emmaline wiped her fingers and dabbed her mouth with the napkin she had draped over her lap. She looked up at him.

  “Or maybe not,” he said ruefully. “Would you like me to call for the gig?”

  She shook her head and stood. He watched as she wrapped the turkey leg and put it in the icebox. She picked up the plates they’d used and took them to the sink, running water over them and the glass they’d shared and soaping up the scrap of linen that lay draped over the edge of the sink. She turned slightly and tossed him the red-striped linen kitchen towel from the hook on the side of the oak cabinet. Apparently, he was to dry the dishes and the fork and the glass. He did and sat them on the ridged side of the porcelain sink that had been recently installed.

  Adam followed her, extinguishing the kerosene lamps as he went, up the steps, down the long quiet hallway, as she carried her shoes she’d picked up from the main room in one hand and her stockings in the other. She was staying at least one more night, and he was glad of it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Emmaline walked directly into the bathing room, washed her face and hands, used her tooth powder, and changed into her favorite nightgown. She’d been wearing voluminous long-sleeved flannel ones when in bed before as it seemed she was always cold, but she wasn’t anymore. One more sign that she was back to her old self, she thought as she pulled the lightweight linen nightgown over her head. It was short-sleeved and scoop-necked and fell to just below her knees where she’d cut it off and paid Betsy to hem it. She untangled her hair with her fingers and loosely braided it.

  She thought about how ridiculous her plan that morning had been, to leave
a note to explain to her husband why she’d left him. She was a coward, she thought. She’d not wanted to have direct conversations, but they’d had them anyway and although nothing was resolved, she’d not crept out of the house like she was guilty of some crime. She was glad they’d talked and glad she hadn’t left. How strange, considering she was convinced she didn’t want to discuss anything with him and hadn’t been able pack her bag fast enough to make her getaway.

  Adam was changed into his drawstring drawers and long john shirt and turned from where he was pulling down the blankets on their bed when she came out of the bathing room. He looked at her slowly from her head to her toes. Maybe he missed the eleven yards of yellow checked flannel that she’d worn since their wedding. She sat at the vanity and rubbed thick cream onto her hands hoping to get the ink from her leaking fountain pen to rub off of her fingertips.

  They climbed into bed at the same time, back to back, not touching of course, and she closed her eyes thinking about Adam’s broad chest and the way his cotton shirt stretched across it.

  EMMALINE WAS HAVING A DELICIOUS DREAM. Her breasts were rubbing against a solid wall of male chest and her hips were surging against heat in a slow rhythm. Her nightgown was around her waist and a muscled leg was edging itself between her knees. She could feel soft flannel on her inner thigh as the leg inched its way up until it was cradled against her. It was remarkably satisfying to rub herself on those thick muscles and no matter how hard or fast she moved, it stayed pressed against her, giving no quarter. Her breasts were aching, feeling swollen, itching for something she could not identify in her semiconscious state.

  Then a hand came around her breast, squeezing and rubbing, finally closing over her nipple, tugging with a thumb and forefinger. She moaned deep and low in her throat, feeling the sound in the pit of her stomach, moving her hips faster and faster. Her eyes fluttered open, her face against wiry, dark hair that tickled, where it stuck out of the neck of a shirt. The feeling only increased her need and the speed of her hips, but she was awake then, clutching the soft cotton stretched tight over a broad back. She reached down to the firm bum attached to that thigh and held it, taking short breaths and reaching for something she didn’t know how to find.

  The hand on her breast moved down her stomach, between her legs, replacing the muscled thigh. Fingers played over her and she realized she was wet there, she could hear it and feel it. A long finger went inside her, and a thumb moved nearby in a slow circle making her cry out as the conscious world went blank and she fell, head over heels, in pleasure.

  She was fully awake when the warmth left her. It was Adam, of course, breathing in pants, lying on his back now, his hands clutching the sheets. She looked down his body in the dim, gray morning light to where that part of him, his penis, she thought and held in a giggle, strained against his drawstring pants.

  “Can I touch it?” she whispered.

  He groaned but didn’t open his eyes or unclench his fists, his forearms hard and showing veins from his efforts. She reached over to him and untied the cord around his waist, moving his drawers down as lifted his bum from the mattress. He sprang free and she couldn’t stop herself from staring at that part of him, standing straight out of dark curly hair, long and thick and pulsing. She touched him before she could think what she was doing, and he moaned, his arm thrown over his eyes. She wrapped her hand around the length of the soft skin and ran a thumb up to its crown. Her legs shifted, and she felt empty and aching for his touch again. His hips began to pump against her hand and she recognized its eroticism for what it was and couldn’t stop herself from thinking she wanted to kiss him there, on the tip of him. He jerked his shirt above his stomach and clenched his fist around hers, moving her hand faster, tight around him. His shoulders came off the bed and he released with a guttural moan.

  She’d had no idea, she thought as she watched him roll up to a sitting position and head to the water closet without one look at her. No damnable idea of the power and the intimacy that she would feel.

  That idiot Henry with his pickle tongue and his fumblings. One minute he was kissing her ear, licking it rather, and the next he had himself in hand and her skirts up. There had been one hard push, dry flesh forcing its way past her entrance, her curse, and the pain that followed. He’d stood up then, fastening his buttons; she was amazed when she looked back that babies were made in mere seconds.

  She’d had some idea that the act was a bit more, that she’d feel something for the other person, but her experience said no. But this . . . this hot intimacy was so much more than her wildest fantasies and strangely, she couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone other than Adam, which was just as well since she was married to him. He padded back into the bedroom, climbed in bed, and rolled up on his side to face her, looking grim.

  * * *

  ADAM SEARCHED her face for dismay or embarrassment. He saw none of those things, although he didn’t know her moods and wasn’t able to anticipate her reactions all that well. He was on shaky ground himself, having experienced what many would say was a strange, if incomplete, consummation of a marriage.

  “I’m sorry, Emmaline,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean to spoil your plans.”

  “What do you mean ‘spoil my plans’?”

  “Well, now that the marriage has been consummated—”

  “But we really didn’t do that, did we?” she interrupted.

  He took a deep breath and thought plain speech was required even as he resisted saying what was necessary. “I touched you,” he said and swallowed. “I touched you intimately. There is no going back. We don’t do what we did and act as if it is nothing.”

  “I touched you, too.” She tucked a hand under her pillow.

  He nodded. “Yes. Yes, you did, and that is why you can’t walk away from this marriage. Yesterday I told you I’d give you money to go chase your dream, even if that wasn’t not what I wanted to happen, but now, things are different.”

  “I’ll have to think on that,” she said and proceeded to roll over, giving him her back.

  “There’s nothing to think about, Emmaline.” His eyes trailed down her body to her waist, the perfect flare of her hips, and her long legs that had been wrapped around his. He nearly groaned just thinking of it.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Your penis never went inside me. We never did what was necessary to have babies, although I enjoyed this very much. You needn’t feel obligated.”

  He closed his eyes. “I am absolutely obligated. I’m your husband. I’ve touched you and you’ve . . .”

  “Touched your penis. It’s very soft, the skin I mean. What a peculiar thing.” She glanced down. “It just comes and goes.”

  Adam barked a laugh. He couldn’t help himself. “It doesn’t just come and go.” She was smiling at him and he was certain this was the oddest conversation he’d ever had. “I mean, it does, but it happens because I’m aroused.”

  She looked at him then from under her lashes, as if she was a siren of old, as if she had the sexual experience of the most expensive lady of the evening in New York City. He licked his lips.

  “I had the strangest desire to kiss it.”

  He did groan then and could feel himself get hard.

  “And there it is again.” She stared at that part of him.

  “You’ve got to stop looking at it and talking about it,” he said sternly even though he was feeling amused and a bit ridiculous. “And where did you hear that word?”

  “Penis? What should I call it?”

  Adam took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “Where did you hear that word, Emmaline?”

  “I found some books in a trunk in Jim’s room when I was cleaning one day.”

  “Books? What type of books?”

  “One was from the Far East with a strange name, but I didn’t have time to examine it. The other was a medical journal”—she looked up at him—“with pictures.”

  “With pictures?”

  She nodded. “I didn
’t get to look at either of them as much as I would have liked because the trunk was locked every other time I moved the bed to change the sheets. And then it was gone.”

  “Did you show anyone else the books?”

  “Good Lord, no! Nettie would have wanted to discuss it at dinner and Betsy would have fainted away from blushing.”

  “And that’s where you saw the word.”

  “It was very clearly marked, and the drawing”—she glanced at his crotch—“was remarkably accurate.”

  Of all the strange things that had happened over the course of that day, Adam feeling the heat of a blush on his cheeks was the strangest. He was laughing, too, blushing and laughing as if he were a fifteen-year-old girl with her first beau.

  “I can’t stop thinking about Nettie at your dinner table discussing . . .”

  “Penises,” she said and laughed along with him.

  Their laughter faded, and Adam sat up on the side of the bed, his back to his wife. “Later today I want to talk about your dreams. About what you’d prefer to do other than be married to me.”

  * * *

  ADAM SPENT the day in the barns helping George and was thankful that the things he was doing didn’t not require much active thought. They were tasks he’d done hundreds of times, although he’d often been the one directing the activities. George took one look at him that morning and began to give orders to the other stable men about what needed to be done with the new foals and the still-expectant mares.

  “Hand me that clamp there, if you would,” George said and waited. “Mr. Gentry?”

  Adam was having difficulty not thinking about Emmaline. She was far different than he’d expected and far more interesting, too. Life would never be boring, that was for certain, and he was genuinely curious to know what she’d been writing when he found her at the desk in the main room. He was certain it had something to do with these dreams of hers.