by Jillian Hart
“Let me.” Austin’s hand curled over hers, stopping her. His cold skin reminded her of how hard he’d worked through the day and of his frigid drive from town. His hand was steady, not the touch of a man who relaxed after work with a half pint of whiskey. His grip was gentle, almost a caress as he finessed the knife from her grasp. The solid wall of his chest pressed against her back, trapping her for a moment against him.
He felt even bigger than he looked, so solid he could have been made of iron. She felt small by comparison, and a bubble of panic caught in her chest and made her gasp. But he was already moving away, not a man meaning to trap her against him. At least not at this moment.
“Willa, did you polish the cabinets? And the floor?” He drew the platter near, intent on his carving. Rich, beefy aroma lifted in the air. Anyone watching him might think he was focused on the task, but she saw his gaze cut sideways to her. “What else did you do?”
“I know your sister did a light cleaning before I came, but I wanted to do something more thorough.” She carried the basket of sliced johnnycake to the table. “I made a promise to you, Austin, one I intend to keep. I will be such a good wife you will not regret helping me. I need a home.”
“I mean to keep my promises to you, too.” He set down the knife, laid it aside and set the platter on the table beside her. Something darkened his eyes, something she did not recognize as he leaned in close. So close, his breath was a whisper against her ear. So close, she could see the texture of his day’s stubble on his jaw. “As long as I’m alive, you will have a home. You won’t be hungry. You’re safe now, Willa. You don’t need to work so hard to prove anything to me.”
“I need to earn my way.” She slipped away, but putting space between them didn’t help. It was as if the walls of the house shrank and were closing in on her, and it felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Her throat closed and she felt as if she were suffocating as she lifted the coffeepot from the stove. Its heat penetrated her hot pad, warming her hand as she set it on the trivet next to the gravy. “Besides, you hardly know me.”
“True, but I feel like I’ve always known you.” He brought his coffee cup to the table, sidling up beside her so that their arms touched. “When I read your advertisement, something in your words grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. It was as if I knew how it would be between us.”
“What do you mean?” How could her simple advertisement do that much? She darted away, breathing hard to draw in air. Her lungs felt crushed, her ribs unyielding, and she stumbled to Austin’s chair. “They were just words.”
“Maybe it was your voice in those words. It was brief but powerful.” He set his cup down beside his plate, towering over her like a mountain. So big, it was him shrinking the room, she realized. His masculine power radiated with a tangible force that overwhelmed her. And his kindness? She knew better than to trust in it too much.
Her ribs wrenched hard, fighting off the memory of Jed hauling her by the roots of her hair, slamming her into the wall and tossing her to the ground. While she bled, he stood over her and set her straight on a wife’s duties by day and by night.
Austin’s approach may be different, but who was to say what lay beneath his gentle manner? He was a man. How could he be much different? She was his convenient wife, someone he’d shopped for out of a newspaper and chose sight unseen. He had expectations—probably not so different from Jed’s—and so she wrapped her fingers around the top rail of the ladder-back chair and pulled it out for him.
“I had to pay by the word, that’s all.” She spoke of the advertisement, continuing to hold out his chair, waiting for him to sit into it. “I only had a few coins, so it had to be brief.”
“Maybe, but it felt as if fate was guiding me.” His hand covered hers and lifted it from the chair back. He stared at her callused fingers a moment, a muscle working along his jaw. He turned thoughtful. “When my mother died, she nearly took my father with her. In his grief, he could barely breathe without her beside him. They had a bond stronger than all the others I’ve seen. They each lived for the other. Ma wasn’t whole unless Pa was in the room. Pa was not whole without her, and he’s never stopped grieving her.”
“It’s a nice story.” She knew that’s all it could be. Men did not love like that. She didn’t know if men loved at all. She’d had no father in her life. Jed had never loved anyone but himself and a bottle of his treasured whiskey.
“It’s not make-believe and not embellished.” Austin tugged her gently around the table, his shadow falling over her when he stepped in front of the lamp. “Happy marriages run in my family. It’s a family trait. Maybe it’s a rule written down somewhere long ago. That when a Dermot marries, love reigns.”
He could not be serious, although he looked like he believed it as he pulled out her chair instead and eased her down into it. The edge of the cushion bumped against the back of her legs and she settled into the softness. Why was he helping her, when she should be holding his chair? Last night he’d been on his good behavior, but tonight? Wasn’t it time for him to be himself? To show her the man who lurked beneath the mellowness?
He knelt beside her to gaze into her eyes. She read his kindness there, nothing worse, and his quiet, unspoken hope. The hope for happiness.
For love.
Her chin sank and her head bobbed down of its own accord, even though she tried to stop it. Austin wanted her love? It was worse than if he’d been a drunk like Jed. He’d picked the wrong woman. She rubbed the spot above her heart where love had never lived.
Where she knew it never could.
How did she break it to him? Did she let him continue to hope for the impossible? Or did she tell him the truth now so he could annul the marriage and find another bride who could give him the pretense he wanted?
Chapter Seven
“But our marriage is a convenient one.” She lifted the basket of johnnycake with a tremble, careful not to look at him. The warm cornmeal scent drifted upward as she set a square of cake on the edge of her plate. She didn’t look at him and her words had held no ring of emotion.
“That doesn’t matter.” Austin rose to his full height and circled to his chair. “You might be surprised to learn that my mother was a mail-order bride.”
“No, how could that be?” Curiosity glimmered like blue promises when she raised her chin and studied him across the table. “She was a convenient wife.”
“My pa tells the story better than I do.” He picked up the platter near to him and forked several slabs of meat onto his plate. His stomach growled with hunger, but he was too hopeful to pay it any heed. He handed her the beef, not bothering to fight the glitters of affection threatening to take him over. She was stunning with the lamplight soft on her ivory complexion and burnishing her dark hair.
He thought about the bundle of purchases still in the entry she hadn’t touched yet—she was more concerned with serving his supper than material things. He thought about the way she’d shivered in bed last night and how she’d tried to hold out his chair for him. He could see the shadows in her. He understood that sometimes it was hard to believe when hard times came to an end.
“My pa was living in the wilds of Minnesota working to save for his own land one day.” He dug into the potatoes—boy, did they look creamy. The woman sure could cook. “He bought an advertisement, said he was looking for a wife who could tolerate a sense of humor in a man. Ma’s was the first letter to arrive at the nearby trading post fifty miles away.”
“I know how remote that lifestyle can be. Where I used to live wasn’t much better. Is that why he wrote away for a bride?”
“Yes. No eligible ladies were anywhere nearby. Ma rode in a stagecoach all the way from Maine. Her parents had died, her older brother had gone bankrupt and lost the family home, so she had nowhere to go.” He ladled thick gravy over his potatoes, thinking he’d ne
ver seen finer gravy. Looked as if he’d been as fortunate in a wife as his father had been.
“A stagecoach.” Willa shook her head. “Your poor mother. It’s such an antiquated way to travel. I’m so thankful for modern trains.”
“I am, too. I only had to wait days for your arrival. My pa waited months.” He took a bite of roast. Juicy, flavorful, so good he nearly groaned. Willa had yet to eat, holding her fork in midair, watching him and waiting.
“She climbed out of the stagecoach at the trading post. She said she hadn’t put her foot to the ground before two dozen bachelors swarmed her.” He washed down his food with a gulp of coffee. “Every man vied for her attention, offering her proposals on the spot. A pretty young lady was a rarity in those parts and she could have had her choice of them. Truth was she’d been turning down proposals ever since she’d left Chicago.”
“But she kept her promise to your pa?”
“Yes. Ma wasn’t about to break her word to him. She confessed to us kids later that she was sweet on him long before she met him. His sense of humor had come through in his letters and that had hooked her. She wanted no other husband but him. They were married two months shy of twenty-one years and what had started out as a necessary marriage for her became something rare. We all knew Ma held on so long through her illness because her love was so strong she couldn’t endure leaving Pa behind.”
“I see.” Willa turned quiet and bowed her head again. She took a small bite of mashed potato. That was it—she said nothing more. When he’d meant to encourage her, to reassure her that great affection could come out of a marriage between strangers, it seemed to do the opposite.
“Is that what you are hoping for?” She set down her fork with a faint clink against the edge of her plate. “A strong and rare love?”
He heard the hollowness in her voice and the soft notes of distress. The light from the lamp caressed the crinkles of emotion carved into her forehead as she turned her wary, uncertain gaze on him. He swallowed hard, seeing he hadn’t reassured her at all. “It’s something to shoot for, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be nice?”
“Austin, I have to tell you something.” She swallowed visibly and drew herself up in her chair. “Do you know how my parents met?”
“No. You haven’t told me anything about your father.” Curious, he leaned forward across the small table, interested and hoping she was about to open up to him. His hopes dropped when he saw emotion gather in her eyes like tears of sorrow. He knew hers would not be a story like his, of true love.
“My father owned a prosperous hotel in Virginia City.” She blew out a soft breath of air as if in pain. “He was married. He had a family. Two daughters and five sons. His wife belonged to all the social clubs in town and she was very handsome in her furs and jewels. They were very fine people.”
“And how did he meet your mother?” Looking into Willa’s eyes, which were stark with pain, it was easy to imagine all sorts of tragedies happening. Illness, accident, death. A widower needing to remarry.
“My mother was a new maid in his hotel.” Willa broke her piece of johnnycake in two with nervous fingers. “One day Ma stayed late to help an elderly, wealthy lady settle into her room for the night. When she was hurrying down the stairs to leave for home, the owner pulled her into a vacant room and forced himself on her. She tried to fight, but she couldn’t stop him. She screamed, but no one came. When she tried to tell what happened, no one but my grandmother believed her. Ma was fifteen.”
“Fifteen,” he repeated, shaking his head, not wanting to believe it. Not wanting to believe that Willa’s mother had endured such brutality. One look at the tears standing in Willa’s eyes punched the air from his chest. “Let me guess. She found out she was expecting you.”
“Yes. A terrible scandal. She was a marked woman having a child out of wedlock. Shunned by polite society. Demoted from her job. The owner told of how she’d asked him for it, that she was a bad girl, and she lived with that shame. No one else would hire her with her reputation and her pregnancy.”
“So she continued to work for the man who raped her?”
“Until he sold the hotel and moved his family to a more prosperous place. Ma works there still.” She dipped the tip of her knife into the butter ball, her hands trembling along with her voice. Her chin went up, showing the steely strength within her.
“I’m sorry, Willa.” He didn’t know what else to say. “That’s a terrible story. You must have lived your life an outcast.”
“I was a bastard. A loose woman’s daughter. I thought you should know.” She set down the butter knife when her hand shook too hard to hold it.
“That makes no difference to me. You are just as lovely to me now as you were when you stepped off the train.”
“I’m afraid you want too much from me. You never mentioned love in your letter. It was never a condition of our marriage.”
“Don’t you want it to be? I mean one day, when we are no longer strangers?” He could feel her anguish and see the happy images he’d held for their future begin to fall. “Everyone wants a family, a place to belong. Someone to love and someone to love them. It’s why I answered your letter. It’s why I chose you.”
“It’s not what we agreed on.” Panic and misery marked her, pulling down the corners of her mouth and painting hopelessness in shades of blue.
“I know,” he agreed. “But don’t you have hopes, too?”
“Hopes?” That stumped her. She certainly did not have the same type of expectations he did. “I came because of my condition. You know I need a roof over my head for the baby. I need a husband to provide for us, something I cannot possibly do on my own. That’s the only reason I’m here. I thought you understood that.”
“I do.” Furrows crinkled his forehead. He looked amazing with the lamplight gleaming on his dark locks, making him more handsome than any one man had the right to be. “But I want you to understand that just because practical matters brought us together, it doesn’t mean it can’t be more. What I feel…well, I was hoping you might feel the start of something, too.”
“You mean love.” She swallowed hard, seeing her hopes crack around her, ready to fall in pieces to the ground. Her hopes were modest compared to his but they had held her up during the train journey and given her the strength to marry a stranger. She stared down at her hands, red from the soap she’d used to scrub the floor and from the wax that polished it. She had to be honest with him. “I don’t believe in love. It isn’t real.”
“Sure it is.” So smooth his voice, so certain he was right.
“I’ve never seen even a glimmer of it anywhere.” She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders and drew up the courage to be honest. “I can work hard, I can keep my promise to be a good wife, but love? No, I can’t promise that.” She shook her head.
“This is my fault.” His buttery baritone could tempt even her to believe. “I’m jumping the gun, as usual. I think it’s important for you to know what I’m hoping for, but I don’t expect these things now, Willa. We hardly know each other. You’re right. I’m just trying to say life will get better for both of us. Having you here is the best thing that could happen to me.”
“Because you’re hoping in time I will come to love you?” She had to ask the question, she couldn’t leave it alone and continue eating supper the way Austin did, as if nothing were wrong. She couldn’t let him believe those things falsely. This man had rescued her, he’d sent her a train ticket with no questions asked and given her his home, the best she’d ever known. No one had treated her with such kindness.
No, she owed him the truth. Gazing across the table at him sitting straight and tall, it made her heart twist tight with an emotion she’d never felt before. Gratitude overwhelmed her for what he’d done. Leaving her to sleep last night without touching her, insisting she buy new clothes she didn’t need and t
his fine meal from the plentiful food in the cellar and pantry. Why, he’d given her more than she’d ever had. Safety, security, and even if she did not know what lurked deep inside him, she did know on the surface he sought to be kind.
She owed him for that alone. She cleared her throat, but her voice came shaky and thin anyway, wobbling with emotion. “I don’t even know if I can love my unborn child because I have no love in me. I know I never will.”
She watched disappointment twist across his face but his square chin firmed, when she expected anger. A wince of pain tightened the corners of his mouth. His eyes remained fixed on her, glossy with emotions she didn’t know how to read.
“You’re right. Love wasn’t part of our bargain.” He blew out a gentle breath like someone trying to hide a wound. He cut into his meat, his knife scraping on the plate. Silence settled between them as the muscles in his jaw bunched and lines dug into his forehead.
He looked like a man thinking things over, and her stomach clamped up tight. He looked like a man debating the merits of staying married to her. Miserable, she choked down a bite of johnnycake, hoping the cornmeal would settle the sudden onset of nausea—from worry this time, not from the pregnancy. She washed it down with tea, waiting for the silence to end.
Now that he knew the truth, what if he changed his mind about wanting her for his wife? She set the glass on the table, careful to hide her shaky hand. The old panic returned. She didn’t have a penny to her name. Where would she go? Where would she find work? After the baby came, who would care for the newborn while she made a living? How could she afford to pay someone to care for the babe? She did not want to go back to living out of an abandoned barn again.
She peered through her lashes, studying Austin’s manner as he chased down a mouthful of beef with a swallow of coffee. With his eyebrows drawn together like that, he could be angry with her. He’d spent so much money on her—the train ticket and all those costly garments. What would his temper be like? Would he yell and throw things? Or would his rage be more horrible?