“I don’t think so.”
“Come to bed.” Maureen patted a waiting pillow. “I need my rest, you know, and I can’t sleep without you beside me.”
He obliged, crawling into the bed and taking her in his arms. “There now. I didn’t mean to keep you awake so late. I’m sorry.”
She nuzzled her head against his shoulder, finding that perfect fit. “I think we should tell the children tomorrow, while we have Jeanette and Charmaine together.”
“Whatever you want,” he whispered, and then he kissed the top of her head.
Ash looked wonderfully handsome in his gray suit, with his hair neatly trimmed and his face freshly shaven. If only he would smile.
They walked from church to the house, the lot of them. Jane was at the forefront, her steps quick as she hurried to the house and her kitchen. Charmaine’s father and mother walked at a leisurely pace behind her, side by side and step for step. The distance between Jane and the Haleys steadily increased.
Howard and Jeanette were a few steps behind Stuart and Maureen Haley, their heads together in a conspiratorial fashion. Jeanette looked marvelous in her strawberry dress and matching hat, and Howard had donned a somber brown suit that he often wore for his lectures.
Charmaine purposely slowed her pace and slipped her arm through Ash’s. For the next couple of hours, they’d be surrounded by her family and she wouldn’t have so much as a private word with her husband. How could she have even considered going to Boston for two weeks!
“They’re not so bad, you know,” she whispered when Howard and Jeanette were well ahead of them and could not hear.
“Who’s not so bad?” Ash’s voice was low and lifeless.
“My family,” she said with a forced smile. “Mother and Daddy, Jeanette and Howard. They just take some getting used to, that’s all.”
He didn’t respond, and goodness, he always grabbed any opportunity to insult her father.
“You’re still pouting, aren’t you?” she accused softly.
“I am not pouting.” At least he finally looked squarely at her as he defended himself.
“Call it what you will. . . . ”
He came to an abrupt stop and faced her fully, glaring down at her. “I’m here, heading to Sunday dinner with four people who’d just as soon shoot me as feed me.”
“That’s not —”
“I’ll probably have to eat in the barn, being a sodbuster and all.”
“Ash, don’t be —”
“I’m here, but don’t expect me to be happy about it, all right?”
He took her arm and resumed the trek to the house. “Well,” she said primly. “You’re being so difficult I shouldn’t even tell you that I decided not to go to Boston with Howard after all.”
She expected him to be happy about the announcement, but if he was pleased at all he hid it well. “Don’t stay on my account.”
“I most certainly am not staying on your account, Ash Coleman.” It was a lie, but she wouldn’t grovel in front of any man, not even her husband. “I simply feel it would be inappropriate to so publicly support Howard. Felicity is my sister, after all, no matter what foolishness she’s done.”
“Whatever you want,” he said in a low voice she had to strain to hear.
Everyone else had gone inside by the time Ash and Charmaine reached the front porch. They hesitated before the closed door, arm in arm still. He could lean down and kiss her. He could tell her he was happy she wasn’t going to Boston. He could whisper I love you.
Instead of any of those pleasant options, he opened the door and led her inside.
* * *
“You can’t mean it, Charmaine,” Howard said in disbelief. “I need you. I can’t hold my head up in Boston after what Felicity’s done to me, not without your staunch support.”
She’d managed to find a moment to pull Howard aside, asking him to join her in her father’s study before dinner was served. Right off she’d told him she wasn’t going to Boston, and she had expected a polite “I understand” in response. How mistaken she’d been.
“My place is here with Ash,” she insisted. “Besides that, I can’t publicly denounce my own sister, and that seems to be what you have in mind.”
She’d never seen Howard so angry before. His fists balled at his sides, his eyes narrowed, and his face turned red. “She ran off with the gardener!”
“Are you angry because Felicity left you, or because she left with a servant? Goodness, Howard,” she said quickly, reading the answer in his eyes, chastising him even though her initial response had been much the same.
“Yes,” he said sharply, and with a stiff hand he slicked back his straight brown hair. She’d thought her sister’s husband attractive enough in the past, if a bit small and sharp-featured. Right now he was downright ugly. “I’ll admit it. Do you think I don’t know my colleagues and friends are laughing behind my back? They’re having a grand time with this scandal, I can assure you.”
“Some of them, perhaps,” she admitted. “The more shallow of your acquaintances.”
“All of them,” he insisted. “Every last one.”
He took a step toward her, and Charmaine nervously stepped back and toward the closed door.
“You must come back with me,” he said softly. “They won’t laugh at me, then. We won’t let them.” There was a glitter in his pale eyes she didn’t like at all, a set to his mouth she didn’t like at all. Howard was desperate, and he was determined not to leave her behind.
Charmaine was not one to easily admit defeat, but she recognized this as an argument she couldn’t win. Not alone, in any case. Not now. With Ash beside her, Howard would have to accept her refusal. At the moment, her only objective was to get out of this room and away from Howard.
And she’d thought this would be easy.
“Let me think about it a bit more,” she said, moving easily toward the door. “I didn’t realize how very. . . . ” Desperate wasn’t a word she could use. ’ . . . how very distraught you are over all this. Perhaps something can be arranged after all.”
She didn’t hear the door swing open, but when she turned around Ash was standing there, his hand on the doorknob, his eyes pinned on her. He didn’t look at all surprised.
“Splendid!” Howard said grandly. “I knew we could work something out.”
Charmaine kept her eyes on Ash. This was her chance to have this done with. In her heart she knew her husband wouldn’t let her go. They could stand together and refuse Howard’s unreasonable request here and now.
“Unless, of course, Ash objects. I hate to leave him on the farm all alone, he might need. . . . ”
“You do what you want,” he said lowly. “Dinner’s ready.” And with that curt announcement, he spun around and walked away.
He’d rather be facedown in the pigsty again than sitting at Stuart Haley’s dining room table with practically the entire clan. And to top it off they were all jabbering at once. Charmaine and Jeanette, sitting directly opposite Ash, had their fair heads together. Charmaine in her brilliant blue and Jeanette in her deep pink, they looked like two bright birds who would take off without warning and fly away. Their voices were soft, musical tones that drifted to him without clear meaning.
Neither of them had eaten much. How could they, unless they’d devised a way to eat and talk and be ladylike all at the same time? He imagined Felicity was a topic of conversation, as well as travel plans, but on occasion their eyes turned to him.
Maureen Haley, regal as always, was talking with Howard Stillwell, who sat at Ash’s right. He did most of the talking, about the recent upheaval in his life. Ash could almost sympathize with the man, but he seemed more peeved than distressed, as if Felicity’s departure were a great inconvenience.
Mrs. Haley did her best to comfort him, with soft words of consolation that struck Ash as slightly insincere.
Of course, Stuart Haley had to have his say, and his comments were directed first to Howard and then to his wife
and on occasion to his daughters.
And then he looked Ash square in the eye. “Cattle,” Haley said with a knowing nod of his head. “That’s what your place needs.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation right now, but Haley was staring hard and waiting for a response. “I don’t think so, sir.”
Haley grinned. “Sure it is! I’ll start you off with a few head. Let’s call it a wedding present.”
A wedding present? The man really was off his rocker. “No, thank you.”
Haley’s smile faded. “No reason to get snippy.”
“Daddy, Ash wasn’t snippy. You, however, are being your overbearing self once again.”
Charmaine had apparently been paying attention to everything, not just her conversation with Jeanette. Dammit, he didn’t want her fighting his battles for him.
“But it makes perfect sense,” Haley said to Charmaine. “There’s more money in beef than there is in wheat. I think about it and it just makes me sick, all that land, gone to waste.”
“My land doesn’t go to waste,” Ash said through gritted teeth, and Haley turned his attention to this side of the table again.
“Sorry if you don’t agree, son, but it makes no business sense at all for you to refuse a gift of several head of cattle. Independence is one thing. As a matter of fact I greatly admire independence. But bullheaded stubbornness is another thing altogether.”
“Maybe you should hold a gun to my head until I agree to take those cattle home with me.” The words were out of Ash’s mouth before he thought, and they managed to silence the entire table. Charmaine’s face went white, Maureen Haley pursed her lips, and Howard stared at the plate before him. Jeanette kicked him under the table.
“Why you. . . . ” Haley said, and with his hands on the table he started to rise.
Maureen put a stop to whatever Haley’s intentions might have been. She stood quickly. “We have an announcement.”
Stuart came to his feet, but he was staring at his wife, not at Ash. “Now?”
“Why not?” she sighed. “Everyone’s here. We might as well get this over with.”
“Is something wrong?” Charmaine asked. For the moment, everyone seemed to forget that Ash had just compared his wife to a side of beef.
Haley rounded the table quickly, and took his wife’s hand. With a nod of her head, Maureen gave him permission to proceed.
Haley turned his eyes and his attention to his daughters. “Your mother and I are going to have another baby.”
They waited for a reaction. Charmaine and Jeanette, side by side, wore almost identical stunned expressions.
Jeanette recovered first. “This is a joke, isn’t it?” she said, and color flooded her face. “Well, it isn’t very funny!”
Stuart shook his head, and a small smile crossed his face. “It’s no joke, sweetheart. Come spring you’re going to have a little brother or sister.”
“Are you sure?” Charmaine asked, leaning slightly forward. “Absolutely without a doubt sure?”
It was Maureen who answered with a smile to match her husband’s. “Absolutely without a doubt.”
Howard was white as a sheet. “This is scandalous,” he muttered.
“What?” Haley asked, his smile vanishing.
Howard lifted his head and smiled wanly. “I said, what a surprise this must be.”
Haley relaxed. “Well, it was that. But it’s a happy surprise.”
Jeanette stood, a petulant frown on her face. “This is just not fair,” she moaned. “You’re a grandmother, for goodness sake.” A single tear slipped down her cheek.
“It’s certainly nothing for you to cry about,” Maureen said rather sternly. “I’m the one having this child, not you.”
“I don’t mean to be selfish, really I don’t,” she sniffled. “But I so wanted you to come to Philadelphia in the spring to be with me when I have my first child, but you’ll be here and I’ll be a thousand miles away. It’s just not fair.”
“Jeanette,” Maureen Haley said with a huge smile. She stepped away from her husband to give her daughter a hug. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was waiting for the perfect moment.” Jeanette sniffled. “First there was Charmaine’s situation, which I sorely misunderstood, and of course we’re all terribly upset about Felicity, and I wanted the moment when I shared my news to be perfect.”
“Any time you share such good news, it’s perfect,” Maureen assured her daughter.
Three of the four Haley women were expecting. Ash looked at an unusually quiet Charmaine, who’d shared her disappointment over not being pregnant just days ago. She was pale, but not unusually so. Her eyes found and held his, as if she knew what he was thinking. No matter what she said to appease him, he knew she was going to leave with Howard on Thursday and she wasn’t coming back. Their chance had come and gone.
Ash was still angry, Felicity was God knew where with a gardener, and now this.
Charmaine paced in front of her seated mother and sister, here in the parlor that was Maureen Haley’s domain. Jeanette occasionally wiped a single tear from her cheek, though she had reclaimed her composure and seemed to be suffering more from sentimentality than sorrow.
Their mother was calm as could be, smiling and happy, irrationally content. “Charmaine, would you sit down,” she ordered softly. “You’re making me dizzy.”
Charmaine obliged, taking the nearest chair and sitting on the very edge. “I just don’t understand how you could allow this to happen,” she said sensibly. “There are ways to prevent conception, and for a woman of your age to even consider having a child is. . . . ”
“You overstep your bounds.”
“But I don’t understand. . . . ”
“Perhaps you don’t need to understand,” her mother snapped.
Charmaine sunk back into her chair. Ash was furious with her, Howard thought that she’d decided to return with him to Boston, and now her mother was angry because she had dared to speak her mind.
She was not very diplomatic in her handling of delicate situations, she realized.
“Are you truly happy?” she asked, and her mother smiled.
“Yes. I wasn’t at first, I must admit. This baby came as quite a surprise to your father and me, and I . . . I initially had the same reservations you do about carrying a child and giving birth at my age. But Doctor Whitfield assures me I’m healthy enough to see this baby through to the end, and it will be wonderful to have a child in this house again.”
Jeanette dabbed at her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. “I didn’t mean to cry. Lately it seems that I sob at the drop of a hat. Robert originally forbade me to come with Howard, but I cried so he finally relented. He would have come along, but one of the partners of his firm has him working a very important case.”
“He must be thrilled,” Charmaine said, an unwelcome envy rising within her. She, the woman who had declared so vehemently that she would never marry and have children, jealous because she was the only female in her family not carrying a child.
Ash would make a good father, when the time came. He was tenderhearted and protective and caring. The perfect father. The perfect husband. She could see it so clearly, the two of them surrounded by their children, filling that house with love and laughter. Ash could tell the children stories by the fire at night, and she would see that they were fed and clothed and well-read. She would teach her daughters to be strong and her sons to be tender.
What was it going to take to make Ash forgive her? He said he had, when she asked, but she didn’t believe him. Ash Coleman was much too honest a man to be a successful liar. His eyes didn’t catch and hold hers the way they once had, and he didn’t smile at all anymore.
A stupid, impulsive telegram, and he just refused to ignore it! All she wanted was for him to smile at her again, was that so much to ask?
She was fooling herself. What she really wanted was for Ash to love her as deeply and completely as she loved him. She wanted everyth
ing. Love, family, happiness. She wanted to be Ash’s one true love for all time.
Nothing else would do.
Twenty
Of all the people in the world to spend a Sunday afternoon with, Stuart Haley and Howard Stillwell were at the bottom of Ash’s list.
Here in the very room where he’d heard Charmaine tell Stillwell that something could be arranged, Stuart Haley sat behind his desk and puffed on a fat cigar, and Stillwell sat in a comfortable chair with his hands in his lap and a pursed frown on his face. Ash stood near the door, poised for escape.
It was quite clear that neither Haley nor Stillwell was any happier with their present company than Ash was. Haley had muttered something insulting under his breath when both of his son-in-laws had declined his offer of an after-dinner cigar. When Howard had very primly refused the whiskey Haley poured, the old man had rolled his eyes in despair.
Ash had downed his whiskey in one swallow. And then he’d downed Howard’s. He wasn’t a drinking man, but by God it couldn’t hurt.
The silence stretched uncomfortably, but when Howard opened his mouth Ash wished for a few more precious moments of quiet.
“I understand you had quite an interesting wedding,” he said, his beady eyes fastened on Ash.
“You could call it that.”
Howard shook his head slowly. “What kind of uncivilized place is this, where a woman can be forced to marry at gunpoint?”
“It’s just a minor detail,” Ash said sharply, “but the gun was pointed at me.”
Howard turned his attentions to the man behind the desk. “Charmaine doesn’t belong here, and she certainly doesn’t belong on a . . . on a farm.” He actually shuddered, as if revolted at the very idea. “It’s unthinkable that a woman like Charmaine might spend her entire life hidden away in this dreary section of the country in that dreary little house. What an unconscionable waste. She’s intelligent and forthright and in Boston, with my help, she can make a difference in this rapidly decaying world we live in.”
“Hogwash,” Stuart said without hesitation. “Charmaine made her choice when she dallied in the gazebo while she should have been dancing and behaving like a proper young lady.” If looks could kill, Ash knew he’d be dead now.
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