An Arranged Marriage

by Susan Fox

  He’d never known a lot about women’s things, especially the personal things they carried around with them, but he could read the word Contraceptive just fine.

  Allison was on the pill, and maybe had been for some time. He remembered clearly telling her he wanted a child by spring. He remembered just as clearly that she hadn’t said a word about this.

  As Blue put her things back into the handbag, he thought about it. Though he wouldn’t have believed Allison would be dishonest with him on purpose, he was worried now that she had been.

  Maybe she was the kind of woman who liked other people’s kids, and maybe even sometimes thought she’d like to have kids of her own, but when push came to shove, she didn’t really want any. The darker thought, that maybe she just didn’t want a child with him, was one he dismissed. At first.

  He had passable looks, lots of money and he’d saved her uncle’s bank. But, when you put a man like him up against a woman of breeding and background, he was a mongrel. Besides, she might also bear him a hellish resentment for forcing her to marry him.

  What other plans had she had for her life before he’d taken it over? It hadn’t mattered much to him before, but now that he cared about her, what she wanted mattered very much.

  He’d known all along that she’d never stay married to him. He’d accepted that, he expected her to be like everyone else who had had a place in his life. He’d wanted her to leave him with children, at least one child, but as long as she was on the pill, she’d never conceive.

  Blue felt the warmth drain out of him. Old feelings of rejection and loss swelled up to add new torments. He did his best to ignore them, but he was only partially successful.

  When he snapped off the light and went into the dark bedroom, he went straight to his side of the bed and climbed in beside his wife. Emotion nearly choked him. Want and need churned so fiercely inside him that he couldn’t help but touch her.

  And when she turned toward him in the darkness, just because his touch had made her wake, he couldn’t keep himself from taking her. He refused to think of it as lovemaking, but the way he touched her, the way they came together, made it impossible for his brain to keep its grip on the word sex.

  Saturday went much the same for Blue as every day at the ranch had so far. He was up early and gone before Allison awoke.

  Pet got up shortly after seven a.m. when Allison did. The two of them and Martha ate breakfast together. Pet disclosed her plan to consult an attorney on Monday to represent her in her divorce.

  After a quick breakfast, Pet and Martha went to town to find a supply of thank-you cards to post to everyone who had sent flowers. When they returned, Pet went into the den and spent the rest of the morning returning the calls of some of the many well-wishers who had called the ranch to inquire about her. That afternoon, she then called the charities she was involved with and set up a schedule for the next week.

  By that evening, Petula announced that she’d bought a plane ticket for Martha to go visit her new grandbaby. Martha would be leaving the next afternoon and Pet planned to drive her to the airport.

  When Blue again came in late, Allison was determined to have a talk with him. She’d attended her last church service without him, and tomorrow was Sunday. Because Blue seemed unusually withdrawn from her, she made the mistake of bringing up the milder subject of church attendance and Sunday work first.

  Once Blue agreed to go with her, he touched her and managed to obliterate all thought of expanding their discussion to the subject of the pill and Charles’s paternity suit. After a very carnal kiss, neither was in any mood for talk.

  The next morning, Blue was up and gone by the time Allison awoke. Just when she thought he’d changed his mind about going to church, he came in, took a quick shower, then solemnly dressed for the service.

  He wore a dark suit and used her father’s onyx cuff links. Allison wore one of the pretty summer dresses he’d bought her in Dallas. Blue was no more talkative on the ride to Chaney than he’d been at breakfast. Though he wasn’t the talkative type, Allison sensed that something was bothering him.

  Later, in church, he held up his half of the hymnal they shared, but he didn’t sing. He seemed attentive to the pastor’s message, bowed his head respectfully for the prayers, but the pleasant service did little to lift what Allison began to think was a touch of gloom.

  Did the church service bring back some unpleasant memory for him? Her second thought was that he probably had never been instructed as a child on the importance of church attendance. Perhaps that was why he didn’t seem to know any of the songs. That thought led to another. Perhaps he was going to the service only because she’d insisted, and he now resented it. But none of that really accounted for the shadowy silence between them.

  Later, they drove home. Their large Sunday lunch together was pleasant. Blue asked Martha to join them before they left for the airport. Allison suspected Blue might have liked for Edward, Mrs. Burns and Miss Tilly to join them at the big table also, but Edward had probably nixed the idea.

  Edward did seem to have some very firm notions of how things in the household should be run, though he waffled a bit on the subject of Aunt Pet. More than once, Edward had behaved in a less than rigid manner toward her aunt. Allison needed no clearer confirmation of the growing attraction between the two.

  She even mentioned it to Blue when they went out riding that afternoon, but he didn’t remark on the subject beyond a quiet, “I noticed.” Blue had been restless hanging around the house. Because he’d seemed to take her insistence that he attend church with her and not work on Sunday as an unspoken expectation of him to stay inside at the house the entire day, she’d decided that not working didn’t mean not riding.

  It was amazing how much of Blue’s tension eased once they were on horseback, riding in the direction Allison had heard his former house stood. Just when Blue started angling away from the old headquarters in the distance, Allison stopped him.

  “I’d like to see the old headquarters,” she told him. Blue glanced her way, but didn’t make eye contact. His expression was grim.

  “Nothin’ much to see. It’s old and run-down. I expect to have it torn down by winter.”

  Allison looked over at him. “I understand it’s quite an old house. Do you think it might have some historical significance?”

  “You’ve been working with the historical society too long,” he chided gently, but she sensed the new tension in him. “The only historical significance it has is that I lived there for more than six years. No matter how many times I patched the roof, a drip always found me when it rained, the cold air still comes through strong enough to move the curtains, and there’s still a hand pump over the kitchen sink. I had to pipe running water into the bathroom for a shower, sink and commode. Had to cut up a closet to put the bathroom in, since there was only an outhouse when I bought it.”

  “You’ve worked very hard in your life, haven’t you?”

  Her soft question silenced him for several moments. The gloom she’d sensed about him was suddenly strong. When he didn’t answer her question, she reined her horse in the direction of the old headquarters. “I’d like to have a look.”

  Blue actually reached over to seize her horse’s reins. Now his eyes met hers directly, and the burning look in them stunned her.

  “No.” The hard set of his face, and the faint bleakness his burning gaze couldn’t quite conceal, emphasized his refusal.

  Allison placed her hand gently over his and saw the immediate effect when his gaze shifted down to look at it.

  “I’m no snob, Blue,” she began softly. “I’ve never looked down on anyone who had less. If you’d rather I not go to the old house, I won’t.” She paused when his gaze lifted from her hand to focus into the distance.

  “I think—” Emotion overwhelmed her. It was more than the sympathy she felt for this proud man who was still insecure enough about his background to be ashamed that he’d lived for years in an old house that had
a room with a dirt floor. A man still so ashamed of his poverty that he couldn’t bear for his own wife to see evidence of it.

  “I think you’re one of the finest people I know,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from trembling with her feelings. “What you came from doesn’t bother or disgust me, and never will. It’s who you are without that old house and without your fortune that matters to me.”

  She paused again, hoping he’d look at her, hoping he was really listening to her. Because she’d just realized how very deeply she loved this proud, hard, complex man.

  She made her quiet words a confession. “I’m in love with who you are, Blue, not with what you have now or with what you didn’t have in the past. If you lost everything tomorrow, I’d still love you, I’d still want to be with you. Even if it meant living in your old house, or living in a trailer on a ranch somewhere while you work for someone else.”

  Those words finally earned her his complete attention. But instead of accepting the love she’d just declared for him, his eyes were burning with an anger and cynicism that shocked her.

  Blue heard every soft word. Each syllable shot a hot dart that impacted painfully on something raw inside him.

  She didn’t mean it. Love was something different for her than it was for him. When love failed her, it would hurt, but she was too secure for a loss of love to destroy her.

  He suddenly had to shield himself from the beautiful mirage her declaration of love called up for him. If he let love become part of things between them, losing her later would be agony. He had to stop her talk of love. In the long run, it would be kinder for them both if he stopped it now.

  “Don’t make meaningless love pledges to me, Miz Allis. I don’t want your love,” he growled, the anger in his voice making his words harsh and brutal.

  Allison stared, shocked, as his fiery gaze held hers and his words pounded her heart.

  “We got married because I needed a wife and your family needed my money, not because either of us needed love. I want a child by spring. If spring comes and you aren’t carryin’, I’ll divorce you so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

  The vicious words made her feel faint. She couldn’t breathe, her shock was so profound. Somehow, she got in a bit of air past the strangling pain in her throat.

  Her whispered, “You don’t mean those hateful things,” made his lips tighten and the muscles of his jaw flex. Suddenly he yanked the reins out of her limp fingers. He spurred his horse. Both horses stepped forward with a jolt. Allison grabbed dazedly for the saddle horn and rode numbly along. Blue glanced back to make certain she was hanging on, before he spurred his horse again and they galloped toward the old headquarters.

  By the time he stopped the horses, they’d reached the old barn. Blue dismounted, dropped both sets of reins over a wood rail of the corral, then came around his horse to reach up and pull her from her saddle.

  The fury in him was terrifying. He took her arm, then led her to the old house on the other side of the ranch yard. When he reached the porch, he wrenched the door open, then pulled her through before he shoved the inside door and sent it banging against the kitchen wall. The inside of the house was dim, but there was enough light coming through the old curtains and thin drapes to reveal the shabby condition of the house itself and its sparse, ugly furnishings. The smell of earth and leather and old wood permeated the place.

  It was not the worst house she’d ever been in. Actually it appeared quite sturdy and quaint. With new wallpaper, paint and a new finish on the wood floors, all it would take was a careful collection of basic furniture to make it comfortable and attractive.

  But Blue seemed to believe it was a terrible place. He dragged her from room to room, forcing her to look at everything as he pointed out what he considered evidence of poverty and worthlessness. He showed her the second bedroom at the back of the house and the hard-packed dirt floor beneath the tarp that covered it.

  By the time they ended up in the other bedroom, Allison’s heart was traumatized. Not by the conditions in the house, but by Blue’s towering anger. She couldn’t help shrinking back when he turned to her.

  He didn’t yell, but his low voice was starkly challenging. “Think you could live in a dump like this, Miz Allison Lancaster Sumner? Think you could shower in that metal shower stall and wash your dishes in the kitchen after you pumped a sink full of water and a couple baby frogs came out of the spout? And how about this bed?”

  He dragged her forward, and pushed her close to the iron bed with its old, sagging mattress. Her knee bumped the mattress and startled a field mouse out of a tattered hole to send it scurrying across the faded fabric.

  Blue leaned so close that his breath gusted hotly against her cheek. “Could you lay beneath me on that bed at night and be happy? Or would you cry for the fine things you’ve always had, like the clean, expensive sheets and the top-of-the-line mattress you had under your beautiful back last night?”

  As if he meant to go the whole way to shocking her, his arms came around her from behind and his hands covered her breasts. “Just how turned on could a woman like you get, if she had to spend the rest of her life sleeping in that bed, in this house, with a man who’d never make enough money to buy her a fine dress or her kids more than a little extra candy at Christmas?”

  Allison felt the complete gentleness in the hands that cupped her breasts. Blue hadn’t harmed her body. She knew with absolute certainty that he never would, no matter what the provocation. She was shaking from the angry words he’d thrown in her face, but she’d also heard the terrible pain behind the things he’d said. Something in him had broken, and this flood of anger was evidence of it.

  She knew she would never see a more terrifying display of the effects of the emotional deprivation Blue had endured in his life, and she forgave him instantly.

  Her hands trembled as she lifted them and placed them over his. She leaned against him, pressing her back gently into his heat.

  She didn’t realize that her face was wet with tears until she heard them in her voice. “I don’t care what you say to me, Blue, I don’t care what you show me. You’ll never do anything that will make me love you less than I love you right now.”

  After a few thundering moments, his hands went slack. He released her and his arms fell away. He stepped back. Allison turned and looked up onto an expression as hard and unfathomable as weathered granite. The look in his eyes was flat and almost dead-looking.

  However much his anger had frightened her before, this terrible cold and lack of emotion cut at her heart in a way that caught her off guard. His voice was low.

  “I haven’t changed my mind about what I want from you,” he said. “When you really get down to it, I want your body for sex, and sex for the children it could give me if you weren’t on the pill.”

  Allison’s breath caught. Somehow, he’d guessed she was on the pill. But the rest of what he said was even more shocking. I want your body for sex, and sex for the children it could give me. The words stung, and were a clear effort to degrade the tender feelings between them.

  But she hadn’t misunderstood his care for her. It showed itself in every touch, in everything he did, and made itself heard in every gruff word. She knew he loved her, even if only a little. The war inside him had to be fierce, otherwise he could never have said the things to her that he had.

  The emotional aftermath of this shocking confrontation was starting to crash down on her, but she made herself withstand it. Blue was worth her patience, he was worth enduring this temporary pain, he was worthy of her love. But if she wasn’t strong enough to be as tough as he was, she’d lose him.

  “I never expected that you would turn out to be a liar, Blue,” she said calmly. “You’re only saying these awful things to me because you know I’ve guessed the real truth. That you love me, but you’re terrified by it.”

  Blue’s eyes were suddenly blazing again, the dead-look in them banished by the outrage that took its place. The word “lia
r” had the right effect. Allison went on softly, aiming for the thing she felt certain might get through to him.

  “But if you can’t let yourself risk loving me, maybe you won’t be able to risk loving the child I might give you. And, if you’re not able to risk loving your own child, what will you really have to offer instead? Money? A fine house?” Allison didn’t let her gaze waver from the fiery wildness in his eyes as she tried to pierce the shield around his heart.

  “What did you want most when you were a child, Blue Sumner? Being poor wasn’t what hurt you, you weren’t starved for ‘things.’ What you wanted most, what you needed and were so hungry for, was a loving mother and a steady, sober father who would make a loving, secure home for you. If you’d had enough love, poverty wouldn’t have mattered—you might not even have noticed you were poor.” Her voice went softer for one last stroke. “If you’d had enough love, my love wouldn’t scare you. And the fact that you love me wouldn’t terrify you so.”

  Blue was so stiff with anger now that she thought he would explode. For all her calm bravado, her knees were rubbery and she was shaking. She’d crossed too many lines with Blue, blasted through too many boundaries with what she’d said. If her instincts were wrong, he would never forgive her. If she lost him because she’d taken this risk, she might never forgive herself.

  Blue suddenly swung away from her. He was gone from the house almost as quickly, stalking through it and out into the late-afternoon sunlight as she started to follow. Allison stopped at the open kitchen door and watched him grab his horse’s reins and leap into the saddle. The horse shot out of the ranch yard at a gallop. Allison watched until Blue and his horse were a speck on the horizon.

  After a last walk through the house, she went out, closing the door to the kitchen securely, then the porch door.

  Still dazed by the trauma of the showdown between them and numb with reaction, Allison got her horse, mounted and rode slowly back to the new headquarters.