“You can’t carry me everywhere.”
“I don’t see why not.”
She turned the doorknob and Stuart pushed the door open to carry her from the parlor. They were halfway up the stairs when the strain began to show on his face.
“Okay,” he conceded breathlessly as they reached the second floor. “Maybe we’re not as young as we used to be, but we’re not exactly a couple of old geezers, either.”
She laughed. Minutes ago she would have thought merriment impossible, but as Stuart carried her to their bed she placed her head on his shoulder and laughed out loud. As he very carefully placed her on the bed, he let out a sigh of relief.
“What would you think about fixing up one of the downstairs rooms as a bedchamber . . . just for a few months?”
She took his face in her hands and kissed him lightly. “I love you, Stuart. I’m so sorry I yelled at you earlier.”
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Scared me a little bit, I can tell you that. You’ve never yelled at me like that before, and I thought surely something terrible had happened.”
She still wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t terrible, but she felt much better.
Stuart sat down on the bed beside her and fell back. “You know,” he said, still slightly breathless. “Maybe I need a before supper nap myself.”
A fragrant stew was simmering on the stove, and the biscuits were almost done. A cherry cobbler was cooling on the table, its perfectly browned lattice crust and the red filling making it almost too pretty to eat.
Why was she so nervous? It wasn’t like she’d never been alone with Ash before.
But when he slammed the front door shut she nearly jumped out of her skin. Fortunately he couldn’t see her, and she had time to compose herself before he stepped into the kitchen.
“That smells great.” He smiled at her, and the result was most distressing. She loved him more today than she had as a silly child. She loved him more every day, and it was tearing her apart.
He didn’t want her to stay. Goodness, he’d been the one with a gun to his head as they were married, he’d been the one to declare on more than one occasion that she’d make a terrible farmer’s wife.
While he cleaned up she set the table and filled two bowls with stew. She placed the biscuits on the table, along with butter and jam. Ash would want coffee with lots of milk and sugar, and she’d have tea. By the time he came to the table everything was in place.
“I guess it was lonely around here today,” he said with a smile.
“A little,” she confessed. “But it was blessedly quiet and peaceful. I don’t think I realized how much Verna talked until she was gone.”
He nodded his head in agreement and dug in. It was surprisingly gratifying to watch Ash enjoy the meal she had prepared, oddly delightful.
“Do you skate?” he asked abruptly.
“Skate?”
“Ice-skate,” he clarified. “I ran across a couple of old pairs of skates in the tack room this afternoon, and I just wondered. . . . ”
“I love to skate,” she said quickly.
“The pond freezes over in the wintertime,” he said. “Sometimes in December, always in January . . . I mean, if you’re still here then we might could. . . . ”
“That would be great . . . if I’m still here.”
She looked into her half-eaten bowl of stew. What did she have to do to prove herself? What would it take to get Ash to ask her to stay?
What if he never asked? After all, she’d told him she didn’t intend to stay . . . more than once. She’d made it very clear that she didn’t want to be here any more than he wanted her here.
His father had said she had sand, and she’d certainly never been one to hold her tongue. Why was it so hard to find the right words now? Where was her courage? Her courage was disturbingly absent, her tongue distressingly uncooperative . . . just when she needed it most!
If she didn’t speak up Ash would never ask her to stay.
“I would hate to leave you here all alone during the winter,” she blurted. “Maybe, if you don’t mind, I’ll stay until spring.”
He didn’t lift his eyes from his near empty bowl. “Sure. Whatever you want.”
“I mean, with Verna gone you need someone to cook for you, and to launder your clothes and keep the house,” she said quickly. “And what if you went skating all alone and fell through the ice and there was no one there to help you? Goodness, I would feel as if I were deserting you if I left you during the winter.”
“Then stay until spring,” he said softly, without looking up.
“Spring,” she said dreamily. “I do love spring here. In Boston it’s still cold and it rains an awful lot. It’s actually a pretty dismal place in the spring. I guess spring’s a busy time on a farm, planting . . . whatever and getting the garden started and. . . . ”
“Yes,” Ash answered, and he lifted his head slowly. “It’s a busy time.”
Charmaine couldn’t look him in the eye, not yet. She stirred her stew and watched the fascinating rotation of a perfectly square piece of beef through the thick gravy. “I would hate to leave while you’re so busy,” she said rationally. “Maybe summer would be better. Yes, definitely summer.”
“The winter wheat is harvested in June, July,” Ash said absently. “I usually hire a few hands to help out, but they have to be fed and the days are long and. . . . ”
“Autumn,” Charmaine finally gathered the courage to look at him again. “Oh, but you plant the winter wheat in the autumn, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that brings us full circle, doesn’t it?”
Why didn’t he say something? He just sat there and stared at her with those green eyes that looked right through her. She should have kept her mouth shut, just this once! He was probably trying to find some diplomatic way to send her on her way. . . .
“What are you trying to say, Charmaine?” His voice was husky, not much more than a whisper.
“I’m not trying to say anything,” she said sensibly, placing her spoon on the table and rising to clear her dishes away. “I’m just . . . rambling, that’s all. Just rambling.”
He caught her wrist and pulled her with a gentle jerk onto his lap. “You never ramble. As a matter of fact, you’re the only woman I’ve ever known who doesn’t ramble. Well, except for that day you tried to convince me that marital continence would be good for me.”
Wasn’t he listening to her? She’d done everything but ask outright if he would have her. “Maybe it would!” she snapped as she tried to rise. Ash pulled her easily back into his lap.
“I don’t think so,” he said softly, and then he forced her to look at him.
“You’re impossible.”
“Stay,” he said simply.
It was the one word she wanted to hear more than anything. Her heart was melting, and when he kissed her she was lost.
“Not until spring,” he said as he pulled his lips from her, “not until autumn . . . forever.”
“Forever,” she whispered.
He kissed her again, a deep and passionate kiss she had learned to answer well. Her tongue swept over his lower lip and then flicked into his mouth, and with a soft moan he drew it deeper. His manhood swelled and hardened against her hip, and she could feel the answering response of her own body. Her nipples grew hard and tight, and at her innermost core she ached for him.
They fit together so well, mouth to mouth and body to body. Surely that meant something. There was never any awkwardness in the way they came together, just an easy and natural connection. It was as if this was meant to be.
“I need you.” It was a huskily whispered plea as he lifted her and set her on the edge of the table.
“I know.”
“Now.”
“Yes.”
She heard something hit the floor, but it was distant and unimportant. Ash was all she knew, all she wanted to know as he lifted her skirt and found the sensitive flesh that already throbbed
for him. He stroked her gently, circled his thumb against the nub at the entrance to her body until she was arching off the table to meet his caress.
She heard him working the buttons of his denim trousers, though she could see nothing for the yards of fabric of her own skirt that flowed softly between them. His eyes never left her, and she could see, in that moment, what she wanted to see. Love, a love as impossibly deep as her own.
With a gentle hand at her hip he eased her closer to the edge of the table, lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist, and then he entered her slowly, pushing inside to fill her completely. For a moment he was still, and then he began to withdraw just as slowly. When she thought he would leave her he thrust to fill her again, and she rocked forward to meet him.
Already she knew his body well, and he knew hers. They moved in an unconscious rhythm, a passionate and perfect dance, a meeting of body and soul. There was more, and she felt it as surely as the union of their bodies. It was a joining of their hearts.
Too soon the climax of her pleasure came, in an intense explosion that burst through her body with the power of a lightning bolt. Ash’s culmination came on top of hers, with a raw and powerful thrust that surely took him deeper than ever before.
She’d never felt this close to another human being, hadn’t known it was possible. It was so much more than physical pleasure, so much more than the fact that his body was a part of hers.
His very soul had mingled with hers, making her a different person, a better person. For the first time in her life she was complete.
He gathered her into his arms, holding her close and kissing softly her mouth, her jaw, the side of her neck. “Stay,” he whispered.
“Forever.” She should tell him now that she loved him, whisper the words that were, for some reason, very difficult to articulate. She should simply blurt it out. I love you, Ash.
“It was the skates, wasn’t it?” he whispered, and she pulled away to see a bright smile blooming on his face.
And the perfect moment had passed. She returned his smile, certain that another perfect moment would come soon enough.
Eighteen
It was a soft, cold rain that had already soaked him to the bone, and Ash ran through the gentle drops and toward the house. In the past three days, since Charmaine had said she’d stay, his life had been perfect. He had a comfortable, peaceful home and, in his bed at night, a wife he loved more than anything. This was everything he’d ever dreamed of, but he’d never expected to actually see his dream come true.
He left his dripping wet hat and soaked boots on the front porch, and Charmaine met him at the door with a thick towel she all but attacked him with.
“Goodness, you’re soaked to the skin,” she said as she rubbed the towel over his body. “You get out of these wet clothes right this minute, before you catch your death of cold.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said obligingly, unbuttoning his shirt and following her to the kitchen. The long tin tub was sitting in the middle of the floor, and as he watched she added another steaming pot of water to the bath. “We’re going to take a bath?”
“You’re going to take a bath,” she said, “a good hot one to take the chill off your bones.”
“You can take the chill off my bones,” he said as he stripped the wet shirt off.
“Not today, I can’t,” she mumbled.
“Why not?” he asked as he stripped off cold wet denim.
Charmaine’s only answer was a despairing glance he read quite easily.
“Oh.” He lowered himself into the warm water and closed his eyes. She was right. The warmth seeped into his bones and leeched away the cold.
The next thing he knew Charmaine was kneeling behind him, a washrag in her hand. She scrubbed his shoulders gently. “I shouldn’t be disappointed, should I? I mean, it’s a little early for children, and I did try to be careful about the days. Well, at least I did think about it those first few times. A woman’s only fertile a few days a month, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it’s true. A woman can plan her family if she’s very cautious. There’s no need to have one baby right after another until one’s health has been ruined.” Her voice was a little too sharp, a little too clear.
“Are you disappointed?” he asked softly.
She was silent for a few minutes, and her hand dipped over his shoulder to his chest where it stilled. “Yes,” she admitted with a reticent sigh. “It makes no sense, no sense at all. I never wanted children, I was always a little . . . ” she paused, and Ash took her hand and drew her to his side so he could see her face.
“Always a little what?”
“Afraid,” she confessed. “You should have heard Felicity scream when she gave birth to Hester. There was so much blood, and . . . and. . . . ” She paled with the memory. “And sweat and strain to the point where I was sure she was going to die. Felicity said it was the most excruciating pain she’d ever imagined, and she stayed in bed for two weeks afterward.”
“It’s not easy, I imagine.”
“Not easy!” With a wide smile, Charmaine playfully splashed water onto his chest. “Spoken like a man who will never have to go through such an ordeal.”
He took her hand in his wet one and held on tight. He imagined when the time came he’d feel every pain Charmaine did, but he couldn’t tell her that. Not yet. Just the thought of her in that kind of pain made him queasy.
“I don’t want you to be afraid.”
“I’m not, not really,” she said with a sigh. “I mean, I was wrong about everything else, so maybe I’m wrong about this, too.”
“Wrong about what?” he prodded.
“You know good and well. . . . ”
“Not really.”
She made herself more comfortable there by the tub, but she left her hand in his. “I was wrong about marriage,” she said with a sigh. “Marital continence and domestic chores and men in general.”
With a wide grin on his face, Ash pulled Charmaine close for a sweet kiss.
“Of course,” she said as she pulled away. “You’re not like men in general. Why, do you know that most men would run and hide from a simple conversation such as this one? They’re afraid to discuss personal matters, even with their own wives.”
She was suddenly thoughtful, pursed lips and averted eyes hinting that she wasn’t finished. “Can I ask you a very personal question?”
“Sure.”
Charmaine looked him straight in the eye then, as if she was getting set to gauge his initial reaction to this question. “Why did you never . . . What I mean to ask is, why were there no women before me?”
“Maybe I couldn’t find another woman who would have me,” he joked.
Charmaine splashed water on his chest. “Horsefeathers. I don’t buy that for a moment.”
“Maybe I was waiting for you to grow up and come home,” he offered, a little more seriously.
“You haven’t thought of me for years, and I darn well know it. I was just a runny-nosed kid, remember?”
She wanted an answer, a real one, the truth. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked softly. “Visit the rooms over the saloon and take my pleasure with a woman who’s made herself available to any man with a couple of bucks to spare?”
“Many men do,” she said. “Maybe even most men.”
He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t know about that. I only know that option didn’t appeal to me.”
“You could have gotten married years ago,” she said. Her voice was sensible, but she was no longer meeting his eyes. She swirled the water with her hand and watched the resulting ripples. “There are any number of single ladies in town looking to find a husband.”
“I couldn’t bring a decent woman here, not with Verna and her boys here to make her life hell. Besides, I had enough obligations without taking on another one.”
A rush of color came to her face. “And then my father takes a gun to you and. . . . ”
He placed a damp hand on her cheek and forced her to look at him. “Let’s just say I was waiting for you to grow up and leave it at that.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s all right. I like being married to a woman who speaks her mind.”
“Then you really are one of a kind.”
An effortless smile spread across his face. “I like being married to a woman who has sand.”
She returned his grin, giving him a wide and bright smile that somehow touched his heart. “That’s why I love you.” Her smile faded. “Well, I mean . . . I didn’t intend to just. . . . ”
“Do you?”
She took her bottom lip between her teeth. Charmaine? Shy? Rather than answer, she leaned over and kissed him gently.
“Ash,” she whispered against his mouth.
A furious pounding on the front door interrupted her, and Charmaine jumped back and up. Ash felt a rush of frustration. So close, so damn close.
Before she left the kitchen, he heard the front door swing open, and a woman’s shrill voice called out sharply. “Charmaine!”
Charmaine’s surprised voice answered. “Jeanette?”
Her sister stood in the open doorway, only slightly damp, and beyond the porch there waited a carriage. A moment later, Howard appeared behind her, stripping off his slicker and dropping it on the porch.
Something must have been terribly wrong for the two of them to come all this way, and to travel to the farm in this weather.
“Felicity,” she whispered. “Oh no, something’s happened?”
Jeanette and Howard exchanged a cryptic glance.
“Let’s not discuss Felicity,” Jeanette said sharply.
Jeanette had always been the beauty of the Haley girls. Tall and shapely without being round, she had the perfect silhouette. Her hair was a shade darker than Charmaine’s, and was just a little bit curly. Her features were classic, the nose straight and strong, the eyes wide and bright blue. Her appearance was always flawless, from her hair to her face to her fashionable clothes. Charmaine had always felt frumpy next to her sister.
“We’re here for you,” Howard said, stepping past Jeanette to confront Charmaine. “You poor dear.” He took her hands in his and shook his head slowly. “I only wish I could have gotten here sooner.”
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