She was oddly elated at that bit of news. She’d always heard that men were incapable of controlling their urges, and so often turned to prostitutes and loose women for, well, relief. But not Ash Coleman. He’d waited for her just as she’d waited for him.
“I think we did very well for our first time,” she whispered with a smile.
Ash kissed her one last time, pulled her down so that she rested her head against his shoulder, and almost immediately he fell into a deep sleep.
Fourteen
Was that sunlight? Ash opened his eyes slowly. The room was flooded with warming rays that followed the cold night. Coming awake to a bright light was startling. How long had it been since he’d slept past sunrise? So long ago he couldn’t remember.
Charmaine was snuggled against him, and the memory of the night that had passed made him smile to himself. This changed everything. No more marital continence, no more sleeping on the floor, no more wondering when Charmaine was going to disappear.
They had a real marriage, now. So, maybe she wasn’t your typical farm wife. Maybe she couldn’t cook or sew, and maybe she was afraid of the pigs . . . but she was still his wife.
She stirred as he did, and lifted her head slowly. She was wonderfully mussed, hair in shambles, nightdress askew, cheeks pink with sleep. This was a sight he could get used to seeing every day.
“Good morning,” he said, and he reached out to touch one pink cheek and push away a strand of wayward golden hair.
Charmaine pinned her brilliant blue eyes on him, shook her head slowly, and backed away. “What have you done?”
“What have I done?”
“You seduced me,” she whispered.
“I seduced you?”
Charmaine sat up and brought the blanket to her chin, suddenly shy. At least she had the good sense to look contrite. “Yes. You certainly knew what was going on here. You should have removed yourself from the room before things got out of hand. You took advantage of my . . . of my inexperience, and . . . and seduced me.”
Ash sat up, his good mood gone. “Yeah, you figured me out. I seduced you by giving you my blanket, and then accepting your invitation to share the bed.”
“You looked cold, what was I supposed to do?” she snapped, as if somehow this was all his fault.
“Kissing to warm me up was your idea, not mine.”
“But you should have known better,” she insisted weakly.
Ash grabbed his clothes and dressed with his back to her. He’d married a crazy woman. Last night she’d been the one to come to him, dammit, and now here she was acting like he’d forced himself upon her.
When he turned around Charmaine was furiously stripping off the sheets. “I have to wash these before anyone sees them. I bl-bl-bled a little.”
He felt a stabbing of guilt, and the need to take Charmaine in his arms and make the pain go away. “Are you all right?” he asked, making an effort not to reveal either of his urges.
She nodded quickly. “This changes everything,” she sniffled. “Everything. I wasn’t supposed to l-l-like you.” She held the balled-up sheets in her hands and stared at him accusingly. “How could you do this to me?”
It all made sense, her insistence on a pure marriage, her sudden withdrawal in the barn that afternoon, the distance that was always there . . . he’d been right all along. And, dammit, she’d told him as much on their wedding night. She had no intention of sticking around.
“When are you leaving?” he asked calmly. Her teary eyes widened, and she took in a deep breath.
“I don’t know, but I can’t stay here,” she whispered. “I’m not cut out for this, Ash. Not for working on a farm or taking care of you or having . . . children.” He could barely hear her by the time she finished her sentence. “I don’t belong here.”
He couldn’t live like this. Waiting for her to leave, getting his hopes up that she’d stay and then having those hopes dashed. “Then get out.”
“What?” It was a choked whisper.
“You heard me.” He actually looked her in the eye. “You don’t want to be here, so get out.”
She clutched the sheets. “It’s too soon. Daddy would be furious, and he’d chase after me no matter where I went and drag me back and dump me on your doorstep. After he’s calmed down and turned his attention to another matter, then I should be able to slip away quietly. We’ll just tell everyone we gave it our best but it didn’t work out.”
She’d thought this out thoroughly, had probably thought of nothing else since she’d said I do! I do, I do, I do!
“It really would be best if I stayed here until matters can be . . . arranged. It won’t be long.”
He wanted to tell her no, he wanted her gone today. Now. He couldn’t stand to look at her anymore. “Sure. Stay as long as you want, Mrs. Coleman.”
Ash scooped the blanket from the floor by the bed. “But I can’t take this anymore. I’m damned tired of being jerked around like a dog on a leash.” Soft and loving one minute, harsh and accusing the next, Charmaine would be the death of him. “I’ll be sleeping in the barn until you leave.”
“But . . . what will Verna and the boys think?”
Ash stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t care what anyone thought, he only knew that he couldn’t share a room with Charmaine and pretend she was truly his wife until she decided it was safe to leave. He couldn’t live with the faint hope that she’d change her mind and stay.
Charmaine held on to the sheets as if they offered some kind of support, as she waited for Ash to answer. He just stood there, his back to her, the blanket hanging from one arm. Her eyes stung with the tears she held back. She couldn’t allow this to happen. She absolutely positively could not fall in love with Ash Coleman.
Without turning to look at her, he finally answered. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. Tell ’em we had a fight, if anyone asks. Tell ’em I’m a lousy husband.”
“But you’re not,” she whispered.
He glanced over his shoulder, a look of mingled puzzlement and anger on his face. “Why get choosy now about the lies you tell, Mrs. Coleman?”
Why did he keep calling her Mrs. Coleman? To remind her that she was his wife in every way, perhaps. Maybe to make her feel guilty. And she did feel incredibly guilty.
He slammed the door on his way out, and Charmaine lowered herself slowly to the side of the bed. What had she done? A moment of weakness, and all her plans were ruined. A single touch, and she had put aside everything she believed in for physical pleasure.
Felicity had been so completely negative about the marital embrace. Horrid, she’d said. Degrading.
But last night hadn’t been horrid or degrading. Not at all. It had been overpowering and a little painful at first, but all in all it was quite . . . agreeable. Maybe Howard was doing something wrong.
Charmaine Haley was not one to cry over spilt milk. What’s done was done, and there was nothing she could do but move forward. She should look at this as an experience, an investigation of sorts. If she was going to return to Boston and join Howard on the lecture circuit, it would be helpful to understand exactly how the physical elements of a relationship threatened to overcome the more pure spiritual attachment. Goodness knew her baser instincts had overcome her good sense last night.
And all it had taken was a touch. . . .
“Charmaine!” Verna’s biting voice was accompanied by a pounding on the door. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” Charmaine asked weakly.
“Church! You didn’t go last week, or the week before. People will talk.” Poor Verna, she was so concerned about what people thought.
“I’m not feeling well.”
Verna’s sigh was audible through the closed door. “Very well. I’ll make your excuses.”
“Thank you,” Charmaine mumbled.
“But we have a standing in this community, and next week I’ll expect you to join me.”
If she was still here next week. “Of course.”
It was Sunday, and that meant no field work for the day. But the animals still had to be fed, and there was enough work to keep Ash busy in the barn.
Anything to keep his mind off Charmaine.
“The first time’s always the hardest.”
Ash nearly dropped the shovel he was cleaning out the stall with, as Nathan’s articulate voice interrupted his thoughts.
“What?” It showed?
“Of course it is,” Nathan said calmly. “You think you’re never going to disagree, and then some little thing crops up and there you go — your first fight.”
First fight.
“You and Charmaine are both so transparent,” Nathan continued. “She’s furiously doing laundry and you’re attacking these stalls like you’re going to find treasure under there somewhere.” He wrinkled his pert nose. “Can I help?”
“No.” Ash returned to his chore. “You’ve helped quite enough.”
“No need to be impertinent.”
Ash waited for Nathan to leave, but he didn’t. He leaned against the doorjamb and seemed to wait himself.
“I don’t understand women,” Ash admitted.
“Ah,” Nathan breathed, and it was a wise, knowing ah. “This conversation again. To be honest, I don’t think any man is expected to understand women. You might just as well accept that you’ll never understand Charmaine, and get on with your life.”
Ash propped the shovel against the stall and went to the door for a breath of fresh air. “I don’t know what she wants,” he confessed. “One minute I think I know exactly what she wants and the next minute, out of the blue, she changes her mind. I don’t know if I can take it.”
“Of course you can take it,” Nathan said, with a hearty slap to Ash’s back. “Man has been ’taking it’ since time began. I know it seems impossible, but eventually you and Charmaine will come to an understanding.”
If only it were that simple. “She’s leaving.”
Finally, Nathan was shocked. “Leaving? Good heavens, what kind of a fight was this?”
Ash stared up and toward the window to his room. “It wasn’t a fight, Nathan, it was . . . the truth. This is a forced marriage that started with a lie. Neither of us wanted it, and it’s not going to last. It’s just as well. She can’t cook, she can’t sew, she’s scared of all the animals but Pumpkin. . . . ”
“Your mother was the same way when she came here. You should have seen her, chasing chickens and milking cows from the wrong side, and ruining half your father’s shirts trying to wash and mend them. She learned, just as Charmaine will learn.”
Ash tore his eyes away from the vacant second-floor window. “There was one very big difference, Nathan, and you know damn well what it is. When my mother came here she came of her own free will. She loved her husband, and this is where she wanted to be.”
He didn’t have to finish, didn’t have to say aloud that Charmaine would rather be anywhere than here. And as for love? Never. Even if they were married for a hundred years, Charmaine wouldn’t come to love him.
He could love her, though. He could feel it already, growing in his heart even as he tried to quell it. Loving Charmaine would ruin his life, but he wasn’t sure he could stop.
“And still . . . ” he said, memories he didn’t want coming to the surface, “it was hard on her. As much as she loved my father, as much as she wanted to be here . . . she was never strong enough. I thought maybe Charmaine was, but it was a mistake.”
“Lila was happy here,” Nathan said defensively.
“Most of the time,” Ash agreed. “You weren’t here in ’74 when the locusts descended on us. You didn’t see her stand on the porch and scream. . . . ”
“You were just a baby. . . . ”
“I was four years old,” Ash interrupted. “And I can still close my eyes and see it. The darkness that came so fast, the grasshoppers everywhere. They ate everything green, and then they started on the bridles and saddles and shovel handles. My mother stood on the front porch and screamed until she couldn’t make a sound.”
He didn’t tell Nathan that he’d had nightmares for years that the grasshoppers hadn’t stopped there. In his nighttime terrors the locusts kept going, through the house, through the people in it.
“Dad was in town, and by the time he got home she was losing the baby she carried. I didn’t know that then, of course, I only knew that she was bleeding and screaming and I knew that somehow those damn insects were responsible.”
After that there had been no more children. Losing that baby had damaged her, physically, mentally.
“She never talked about that time,” Nathan said softly.
Ash shook his head. “No. She tried to ignore it, to pretend that it never happened. But you see, she wasn’t strong enough for this life, and it killed her.”
“I can’t believe that.”
Of course Nathan couldn’t believe it. If he’d thought his precious Lila was in danger he would have done everything in his power to save her. The little man would have done battle with demons, if necessary.
“It would be the same with Charmaine,” Ash said gruffly. “What am I supposed to do, force her to live and die here?”
“You’re depressing me,” Nathan said with a sigh. “I think I’ll saddle Pumpkin and go for a nice long ride in the countryside.”
“Sure,” Ash mumbled as he returned to his work.
“And I think you should give your wife a little more credit. She’s stronger than you know, I imagine. While I’m gone, and you and Charmaine have the place to yourselves, why not try to talk some sense into her?” Nathan suggested in an offhanded way. “Women are volatile creatures, stormy one minute, calm the next. Who knows, maybe Charmaine’s winds have changed.”
Ash shook his head and returned to his chore as Nathan took the saddle from the wall.
* * *
Maureen closed her eyes and reclined on the sofa. Well, she was going to have to relent and go see the doctor, like it or not. Her head was spinning, and her stomach was twirling nauseatingly. Was this normal? What if it was something worse than the change of life? A terrible disease, perhaps. She’d been healthy all her life, and this speculation over her failing health was disturbing, to say the least.
She had tried to convince herself that this illness was a result of her age and the unnatural amount of excitement in the household as of late. Charmaine’s return, the ball, the wedding . . . but as time passed and life returned to normal, her health had not improved.
Everyone else was out of the house, Stuart on the range and Jane at her sister’s, so when someone knocked loudly on the door she groaned and rose to answer. Perhaps it would be Charmaine, come for another visit. That thought cheered her enough that her headache all but disappeared.
But it was that odd little man, Ash’s friend, who stood at the door with his hat in his hand.
“Mrs. Haley,” he said with a bright smile. “Just the woman I wanted to see.”
Charmaine made the bed with clean sheets, while those she’d soiled last night hung on the line outside the kitchen door. She thought she’d feel better when the bed was crisply made, but that wasn’t the case.
Ash Coleman would make some woman a wonderful husband, one day. When she was gone and the divorce was final and any lingering scandal had died down. He was hardworking and handsome and really very sweet, most of the time. And last night. . . .
She tossed a pillow onto the bed. This couldn’t be happening to her! She wasn’t twelve any more, she was twenty-one, fully grown and mature and very certain about what she wanted from life.
She wanted her life to mean something. She wanted to do something important. Falling in love with Ash Coleman and considering, for even a moment, staying here, was out of the question.
But her life of seminars with Howard suddenly seemed lonely. Funny, for they’d always been exciting to her, before. Before she’d made the mistake of coming back to Salley Creek. Before the ball. Before she’d begun to wonder
if she would always miss Ash the way she missed him now.
Goodness, he was in the barn! How could you miss a man who was no more than a few hundred feet away?
She should have better control of herself. She wasn’t a misinformed child, she was an educated woman who understood very well what had taken place last night. Her physical impulses had overridden her common sense, it was as simple as that.
But it wasn’t simple at all. She wasn’t emotional like Jeanette and she never had been, yet her emotions were in turmoil. Of course, this wasn’t love! Love was harmonious. Neat and tidy and warm, and a comfort to those who found it. This, whatever it was, was complicated and dreadful. It was turning her insides around and muddling her normally clear mind. Her heart hurt, and for the first time in her life she didn’t know what she wanted.
Charmaine threw herself, face first, onto the bed. Her life was in shambles.
Fifteen
Damn, it was turning cold fast. Ash hurried from the barn to the house for a quick evening meal, and then it would be back into the cold for him.
He’d been sleeping in the barn for three days, and but for one snide comment from Verna everyone in the house ignored the new sleeping arrangements. He didn’t sleep any better in the barn than he did in the house, but at least now he could blame the weather or the hard cot or Charmaine for his sleepless nights.
He heard the shouting before he so much as set foot onto the steps to the porch.
“I will not allow it!” Verna’s voice was high-pitched and sharp.
And who was the recipient of that acid tongue tonight? Elmo? Oswald? His smile faded. It had better not be Charmaine.
His question was answered before he opened the door, by Elmo’s unusually strong reply. “I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”
“But what about the treasure?” Verna hissed as Ash opened the door.
The three of them turned sharply to the door. Verna’s face paled, and Elmo had the good manners to look ashamed. Oswald was cool as always.
“What treasure?” Ash asked as he closed the door behind him, shutting out the cold wind.
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