The air that drifted through the open window was cool, almost cold, but Ash didn’t make a move to close it. Fall was a busy time of the year for him, though he always enjoyed it while it lasted. Winter was close behind, and that meant bouts of snow and ice, and wind that was truly cold.
In the moonlight, the farm was peaceful. The barnyard was quiet, the fields beyond were perfection in the soft light of the moon. In the house all was quiet as well. No one stirred but him. He was the restless one, the one who roamed the house or stood at an open window long after dark.
He heard it, a soft peal that carried on the wind. Midnight, struck on the Salley Creek clock that old Randall Salley had erected before his death. His gift to the town, he said, a monster of a clock that sounded each hour of the day. Ash couldn’t always hear the chimes from miles away, but when the air and the wind were right, the sound carried to his window like a soft and plaintive cry in the night.
The peal of midnight reminded him that another day had begun, another day that promised to be just like the one that had passed.
He closed the window softly.
She’d been home five days, and already she was beginning to feel like the child her parents treated her as. They refused to accept that she was no longer thirteen, that she had thoughts and plans of her own.
There wasn’t a single ally in this house, not even the one person who shared her predicament. Ruth was quite unhappy with the change of plans. An extended visit to Salley Creek, Kansas, was not on her agenda, but like Charmaine she saw no way out. Instead of joining forces and commiserating, Ruth preferred to take her frustration out on Charmaine.
These evening meals were becoming a tedious routine. Her father went on and on about how wonderfully the ranch was doing, and how great some man or another was, and how splendid it was to have his baby home.
After the first three nights, she’d quit trying to tell him that she was not his baby any more.
She wanted to go home. Home to Boston. It wasn’t just her father who had her distressed. Eula, her oldest and dearest friend, was so changed. She had become everything Charmaine had preached against in the past two years. How could poor Eula be truly happy? She was a virtual slave to her husband’s whims, working in his store, keeping his house, bearing and raising his children. And yet she seemed to be happy, poor thing.
Charmaine had at first had such hope for her other friend, Delia. She was a schoolteacher, a dedicated professional, and an independent woman . . . but a brief visit had quickly revealed that Delia had one desire in life. To find a man, get married, and settle down into the same drudgery Eula groveled in.
It had been Eula who’d shared the news about Ash Coleman, remembering that Charmaine had once been smitten. John Coleman, Ash’s father, had passed on last year, and Ash was sharing the ranch with his stepmother — a woman Charmaine had never met or heard about — and two stepbrothers.
It occurred to Charmaine, then and now, that she really should stop by the Coleman farm to pay her respects to Ash and perhaps meet the rest of the family. That would be, certainly, the civilized and proper thing to do.
Her father was going on again, as he speared a large chunk of beef, about the plans for the masked ball. He really seemed to think that if he threw a party she would stay. Goodness, he didn’t understand her at all.
“Stuart, you should see the dress we’re making for Charmaine,” her mother said between delicate bites of beef. “It’s the most gorgeous creation, snow-white with just a touch of peach in the bodice and skirt ornamentation. Seed pearls are sewn into the neckline and into a floral motif on the full skirt.”
Her father winked at her and smiled widely. “Sounds like a wedding dress to me.”
Charmaine took her napkin from her lap and placed it, slowly and gently, on the table by her plate. She couldn’t go on this way, not for better than another two weeks. Her father had to understand who she was and what she wanted. Now was as good a time as any to get this over with.
“I’ve made a very important decision, recently.” Charmaine’s voice was low and composed, but the calm was all an act. Her heart pounded, and her palms began to sweat. “I do hope you’ll understand and support me.” She straightened her spine and took a deep breath before continuing. “I’ll probably never marry.”
“What?” her father leaned forward, head tilted to bring one ear closer to this unthinkable statement.
If she explained, surely he would understand. “Women are meant for more than breeding and submission to a man’s pleasure, and what other reasons —”
“Charmaine Haley!” Her father shot to his feet, and his face turned an alarming shade of red.
“Now, now.” Maureen Haley patted the hand her husband had placed on the table and now leaned against. “I’m sure Charmaine didn’t mean what she said.” A censuring look that was surely meant to convey an order to agree shot from Maureen to her daughter.
“I did mean what I said,” Charmaine insisted gently. “There’s an entire world outside Salley Creek, and it’s growing and changing every day. There’s more to life for an educated woman than a sorry existence of emotional servitude and physical subservience.”
Stuart Haley narrowed his eyes as if he couldn’t believe that this was his daughter he was looking at. “Howard filled your head with this nonsense, didn’t he, that puny little pompous ass.”
“Now, Stuart —”
Charmaine interrupted her mother. “Howard is an intelligent and well-respected physician, your son-in-law, and the father of your granddaughter. I think it’s inappropriate for you to call him a pompous ass.”
“What has he done to you?” With a sigh, her father took his seat.
If only she could make him see that what she was doing was important, necessary, and right, she could enjoy her visit here and then return home to Boston with a clear conscience. And perhaps in the future they could avoid these awkward moments. “I’ve assisted him in several seminars, distributed educational manuals, and spoken with those women who were uncomfortable discussing personal matters with a man, even one who is a physician.”
“Personal matters?” he asked dully, as if he didn’t really want to know. “Personal matters such as what?”
“Marital continence, for one.” She tried not to blush, but this was, after all, her father. “Contraception, if the more desirable self-restraint is impossible. The unhealthy influence of the bicycle and romantic novels on young women, for another. Then there’s the physical detriment of the corset, and the —”
“Marital continence?” he repeated in a monotone. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Of course. Healthy marriages don’t depend on a physical relationship.” She forgot, for a moment, that these were her parents. “Once a married couple has all the children they desire, abstinence is the healthiest course of action for everyone involved. The myth that the marital embrace is necessary —”
“Maureen, make her stop.”
Charmaine bit her lower lip as she studied her father’s unnaturally pale face. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Daddy.”
His shock gave way to anger. She could see it, as the color came back to his face all at once, his jaw hardened, and his gray eyes glinted like steel. She could see it, as the hands that had been flat on the tablecloth slowly balled into fists.
“Boston!” he spat. “I never should have sent you there, and you’re not going back!”
“Daddy!” Charmaine shot to her feet as her father had. They stood at opposite ends of the long table and faced one another defiantly. “You can’t —”
“This discussion is over,” he said as he turned away. “I think I’ll skip dessert tonight, Maureen. I’ve lost my appetite.”
After her father stormed from the room, Charmaine slowly and gracefully took her seat. He’d change his mind in a day or two. After all, she was twenty-one years old, and he couldn’t force her to stay here. He couldn’t keep her prisoner.
“Well, Charm
aine.” The slightly edgy voice reminded Charmaine that she was not alone. Of course, her mother would understand. Her mother wouldn’t force her stay here when the time to leave came. “That was a scene I could have done without.”
It had turned rather ugly, there at the end. Charmaine hadn’t meant to embarrass her father, not really, she’d just said what was on her mind as she usually did. If he would simply accept the fact that she was a grown woman and treat her as such, they wouldn’t have a problem at all.
“I did think Daddy was more open-minded than this,” she declared sensibly.
“And whatever gave you that idea?”
There was a sharpness Charmaine had never heard in Maureen Haley’s voice, and she realized again that she had not a single ally in this house. Not even her own mother.
Two
Ash hurried through the morning chores, taking the time to say a few soothing words to the dairy cows and the horses as he saw them fed and watered. It was Elmo’s job, supposedly, but Elmo was feeling poorly this morning. Again. Ash was certain that his youngest stepbrother would be feeling fine as soon as the chores were done.
This was a bad morning for Elmo to lie in bed and moan about his aching rounded stomach and his pounding ugly head. It was time to plant the winter wheat, and Ash had his hands full. When the animals were taken care of, he’d grab a bite to eat and a glass of milk and head out to the fields. Oswald was supposed to help, but he’d no doubt have his head stuck in a book and be too engrossed to leave the comfort of the house. It was just as well. Oswald usually ended up making more work for Ash, when he should have been helping.
When he had time to daydream, which wasn’t often, Ash wondered what his life would be like if his father had never married Verna March and brought her and her two boys to the farm. It was a nice thought, one that had intruded into his thoughts often in the past two years and with increasing regularity in the ten months since his father’s death.
In his daydream he worked the farm alone — though that was pretty much the way it was now. The way things were, Elmo and Oswald were no help at all, and Verna would never get her lily-white hands dirty. But with very little effort, Ash could imagine stepping into the house at the end of the day and finding everything peaceful and quiet.
Without his stepbrothers and stepmother in the house, he could finally think about getting married. As it was, he couldn’t imagine bringing any decent woman here to endure life with Verna and Elmo and Oswald.
Ash had very definite ideas about what he wanted in a wife. Someone quiet and even-tempered — a quality his father had evidently forgotten to look for when he’d chosen his wives — someone who could cook and sew and wouldn’t mind helping with the animals during planting and harvesting season. Someone who was healthy enough to bear several children. He didn’t really care if she was especially pretty. There were other, more important qualities he’d look for in a wife when the time came. A good healthy dose of common sense would be necessary, that and a love of the simple life. Not every woman was cut out to be a farm wife.
He stepped into the house and was assaulted by the pleasant smell of bacon and eggs. A smile crept across his face and his mouth watered as he walked toward the kitchen. Verna must be in one of her rare domestic moods today, and he wasn’t going to complain.
The deserted kitchen contained the warmth of the stove on this chilly autumn morning, and the odor of breakfast hung in the air — but there was no food on the table save a few biscuits left over from dinner last night, and the skillet on the stove was empty.
He stroked his thick beard with one thumb and then hooked a long strand of hair behind his ear. When John Coleman had first brought his second wife home, she’d been a fireball. Cooking fairly decent meals, cleaning, doing the laundry. That was the reason, after all, that his father had remarried. A working farm needed a woman’s touch, and two hardworking farmers needed someone to take care of the house.
It hadn’t lasted long. As soon as Verna had settled in and sent for her grown sons, she had changed. Meals were whatever she could throw together quickly, the laundry was poorly done, if at all, and the house was no cleaner than when John and Ash Coleman had lived there alone. In fact, with three new residents it was often worse.
His father had never complained about the boys. It was a big house, after all, with four bedrooms upstairs and a sitting room downstairs that Verna had converted into a bedroom when John had become ill.
If only they would occasionally make themselves useful. If only they would pitch in and do their share — a child’s share — anything.
Verna stepped into the kitchen with a tarnished silver tray and two plates that looked as if they’d been licked clean. “Oh, Ash, you’re still here,” she said, placing the tray on the table that sat in the middle of the large, square room.
Verna March Coleman had probably once been a real beauty and she was still attractive, for an older woman. She was tall and trim, and had very little gray in her dark hair, even though she had to be approaching fifty. She refused to reveal her age to anyone, but Oswald was twenty-six and Elmo was twenty-one.
Attractive or not she was, to Ash, the ugliest woman on earth. He was sure she’d made his father miserable in his last year of life, with her nagging and her barbs, and she’d always treated Ash as if he were less than nothing. As a farmhand, at best; as a nuisance, most of the time. Never mind that she and her boys would likely starve without him.
“Just grabbing some breakfast,” he said simply, “before I head out to the fields.”
Verna flashed a smile that was so cold it made the hairs on the back of Ash’s neck stand up. “I made bacon and scrambled eggs, but Elmo was so hungry I’m afraid he ate it all. Since he’s not feeling well, I thought it might help. There are biscuits.”
Ash grabbed a couple of the cold biscuits and poured himself a glass of milk.
If he could leave this place, he would be tempted. If he could throw Verna and her good-for-nothing boys out of this house and off this farm, he would do it in a heartbeat and without regret. But the woman had been his father’s wife, and when the pneumonia that had taken John Coleman’s life had taken a turn for the worse, he’d made Ash promise to take care of this woman he had, for some reason Ash couldn’t fathom, come to care for.
Oswald came into the kitchen with a book in one hand and a strip of crispy bacon in the other. The book was held high, shielding his face, and he moved the nearly black bacon before him as if it were a schoolmaster’s baton.
“We’ve got to finish planting the wheat today,” Ash said as he finished off his cold breakfast.
Oswald lowered his book slowly, revealing a face that was clean shaven, well formed, and almost pretty. Pale hair, more blond than brown, had been slicked straight back. “I must finish this chapter before I even think about work. This is the most mesmerizing novel I have ever read, and I can’t possibly put it down now.”
Just as well. “I thought that book you read last week was the most mesmerizing.”
Oswald raised a finely shaped eyebrow. It was the left one, arching up in a way he had surely studied before the mirror. “I shouldn’t expect you to understand. Have you ever read a novel? A book of any kind? Have you ever read anything but the Farmer’s Almanac?” He shared an amused smile with his mother. “Can you even imagine it, Ash Coleman reading a book?”
Ash was certain that this was an insult, but he let it slide by without comment. He’d rather work alone, anyway, than listen to Oswald’s inane chatter all day. And no matter what Oswald said about finishing a chapter, Ash knew that if he walked out of here alone he’d not see Oswald again until dinnertime. He pocketed two more of the cold biscuits and an apple so that he wouldn’t have to return for the noontime meal.
* * *
Stuart stared at the figures scribbled in the accounting books that lay open on the desk before him, but he didn’t see the numbers. They blurred and ran together, danced before his eyes.
Howard Stillwel
l, that worthless son-in-law of his, had ruined his youngest daughter. Marital continence. Physical servitude! What had happened to Charmaine’s common sense? Howard had filled her head with nonsense, and she believed it. She believed it!
He’d made his ranch a success, he had more money than he would ever need, but it was Maureen and their daughters who made his life worthwhile. He didn’t want Charmaine to become an old maid, to live her life without knowing the joys of love and a family, but that’s where she was headed. Thanks to Howard.
Maureen came into the room so quietly, he didn’t know she was there until she placed a hand on his shoulder. The touch was familiar, gentle, and soothing. Even though she surprised him, he didn’t so much as flinch.
“Worrying about Charmaine again?” she asked, and the fingers of that hand began to knead his tense muscles.
“Of course,” he muttered.
Her other hand fell upon his other shoulder, and the long fingers massaged.
“It is distressing,” she said softly.
“Distressing! That’s an understatement. It’s downright terrifying.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, she laughed lightly. “She’ll come around.”
“I wish I could be sure.” He grabbed the wrist of one of those gentle hands, and pulled his wife to his side and then onto his lap. Immediately, he felt better, soothed somehow because Maureen was with him. “Did you hear her last night? Good God.”
Maureen perched on his thigh, and the comfort he’d thought impossible a few minutes ago grew and settled in his heart. She always did this to him.
Her hands settled gently on his shoulders. “You needn’t worry, darling. Charmaine’s our daughter,” Maureen said sensibly. “She’s smart and pretty and still so very young. I’ll agree that Boston and its modern ways have had a disturbing influence on her, but when the right man comes along, she’ll change her mind about all that nonsense.”
“Do you really think so?”
After all these years, his wife’s smile still had the power to soothe him, to make him forget, for a while, about bad market prices, rustlers, storms, and even, she proved to him now, a disobedient and disgustingly modern daughter.
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