“Even a young woman who shows a rare lapse of good judgment should be allowed to choose her own husband, or even the right to live a full and happy life without one,” Howard insisted. “Charmaine is curious, astute, charming. She has such potential in Boston. Did you know she was considering writing a manual of her own? Her role in my seminars has grown steadily, and in a few years she might even have given lectures of her own. A woman like that will never be happy on a farm.”
The hell of it was, Howard Stillwell was right. Ash sauntered to Haley’s desk and poured another whiskey. For courage. To kill the pain of the truth. “To be perfectly honest,” he said as he studied the short glass that was filled to the rim, “there was no dallying going on that night.” He tossed the whiskey back, emptying the glass and then forcefully returning it to the desk.
He grinned widely at the man before him. “That’s right, Stuart, you shot me for nothing.”
Haley’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “Charmaine admitted to me herself. . . . ”
“Charmaine said what she thought she had to say to get back to Boston. You made a wrong assumption when you stumbled on us that night, and she went along with it so she could go back where she belongs.” He refilled his glass with whiskey. “Where she wants to be.”
“Poor dear,” Howard mumbled. “She must have been terrified.”
“Yeah,” Ash said, and his voice slurred just a little. Terrified of being stuck in this place for the rest of her life. Terrified of being married to a sodbuster. He downed this glass as quickly as he had the last one, tossing it back and relishing the burn. “So when you take her to Boston on Thursday . . . keep her there.”
His insides flamed. It was the whiskey, but more than that it was the certainty that no matter how much it hurt, this was best for Charmaine.
Stuart shot to his feet. “You can’t put my daughter aside like this.”
Ash forced a smile, and with both hands he ripped his shirt open. Buttons dropped to the floor as he presented Stuart Haley his heart. “Shoot me,” he said, his smile never fading. “Go ahead. I know you, Haley, you’ve got a six-shooter in one of those drawers, maybe a derringer up your sleeve. Put me out of my misery.”
He might as well be dead. Charmaine deserved better. She deserved a choice, a bright and beautiful life, and what she wanted — what she’d always wanted — was Boston. He wouldn’t sit around and mope, knowing in his head that she wasn’t coming back, hoping in his heart that she would. It would be pure hell.
Ash’s head pounded, and he could feel every heartbeat in his chest, the rush of heated blood through his veins. Haley stared at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was.
He had to get out of here. Haley would tell Charmaine that she was free at long last . . . he sure couldn’t do it himself. He couldn’t look at Charmaine and smile and wish her a nice life in Boston and pretend it wasn’t killing him to send her away.
Ash turned his back on Haley and Stillwell and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him. The hallway to the front door was incredibly long, and if he didn’t get out of here soon he was going to suffocate.
A doorway near the front door opened slowly, and Charmaine stepped into the hall, placing herself between Ash and an easy escape. Jeanette and Mrs. Haley were close behind her, looking curiously his way. Why had he slammed the damned door! He should have left quietly, sneaking out like the coward he was.
Charmaine looked him up and down, and the response in her eyes and her expressive face was one of concern and . . . no, not love. “What’s wrong?”
He wanted to tell her nothing was wrong. He wanted to assure her that everything was fine and take her home.
But nothing was fine. His life would never be fine again. Because the only way to make Charmaine truly happy was to let her go.
She’d proved it to him again and again.
That would show Daddy, wouldn’t it, if I spent the entire evening dancing with a Coleman.
I do! I do, I do, I do!
I never had any intention of staying here. . . .
Married to Ash Coleman. Please save me.
“Ash?” she prompted.
His head swam, the hallway and the women in it tilted slightly to one side. Dammit, he didn’t drink. Why had he downed Haley’s whiskey like an old drunk?
Charmaine waited a moment for a response, and then she came toward him. Floating, like something out of a dream. Frowning, knowing just by looking at him that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
Before she reached him he stepped away, skirting around her and heading for the door. “I need to speak to you outside,” he said softly.
They were rounding the house, headed for the stables, when Charmaine was finally able to snag Ash’s arm and force him to turn around. An ominously cold gust of wind chilled her.
Ash stood before her with his gray jacket askew and his shirt hanging open and an icy gleam in his usually warm green eyes.
“I think you should stay here until Thursday.” He brushed a strand of windblown hair from his eyes. “I’ll bring your things by tomorrow.”
“What?” His words were perfectly clear, but she didn’t understand. “Why would I stay here? I told you I decided not to —”
“It’s over,” he interrupted her. “You go back to Boston and stay there, and I’ll . . . I’ll find myself another wife.”
“Another wife? Ash!” She grabbed a flapping bit of his dancing shirt. “What is this? Did Daddy —”
He knocked her hand gently away, the way he might swat away a bothersome fly. “Daddy has nothing to do with this,” he said gruffly. “A man should have a choice when it comes to the woman he’s going to spend his life with. Neither of us had a choice, Runt, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like having cattle or women forced on me.”
She dropped her hand and took a step back. “But I thought we decided. . . . ”
“We had fun in bed,” he said coldly. “And on the table, and on the floor in front of the fire, and that one time in the barn.” He actually smirked, making all those wonderful memories somehow shameful. “But I don’t think either of us should make important decisions based on . . . what did you call it? Lower impulses. Magnetic forces. Most people just call it lust. Whatever the hell it was, I imagine it will be the same with any other woman.”
“Ash!”
“I’ll find out soon enough.”
It couldn’t be true.
But she’d seen how miserable he’d been all day, on the ride to town and all through dinner. “You’ve been planning this all along, haven’t you?”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “Just since your sister and Howard came to the farm to save you. It’s the perfect solution. You’ve got your escort back to Boston, and with Verna and her boys out of the way I can have my pick of women from hereabouts.”
“Your pick!”
Ash grinned at her, but it wasn’t the warm smile she was accustomed to. It was positively wicked. “Any comely woman who can cook a decent meal and warm my bed will do.”
She didn’t believe him. Couldn’t. What they had was special, and he couldn’t just send her away without a care. She searched for an explanation, and quickly found one. “It’s the telegram, isn’t it?” she whispered. “You can’t forgive me for that one impetuous mistake.”
He took a moment to give her reasoning serious thought, and then he averted his eyes. “Yeah, that’s it. ‘Married to Ash Coleman. Please save me.’ ”
“That was before —”
“Besides, with Verna and the boys gone, I can have the place to myself for a while. It’s what I always wanted, you know. Peace and quiet. A home that’s a haven, not a battleground.” He swayed a little, as if the wind was driving him back.
“You’re drunk!”
He shook his head, and Charmaine leaned forward to smell the whiskey on his breath. “I am not,” he said steadily. “I’m clearheaded, for once, and I know exactly what I want.”
She did
n’t want to know. She had to ask. “And what’s that?”
“I want you to go back to Boston.” He swayed slightly as a gust buffeted them, but his eyes were clear and steady. “Hell, maybe you can even write a manual about us, and stand up in front of an interested crowd and analyze the most intimate aspects of this farce of a marriage.”
“I would never —”
He continued as if he didn’t hear. “I want to choose my own wife, next time, and I just . . . I just want this nightmare to be over.”
Charmaine spun around before Ash could see the tears that sprung to her eyes. A nightmare! Their marriage was a nightmare? It hurt, more than she’d ever known words could. She wouldn’t break down and cry in front of him! Not now, not ever.
Of course he wanted to choose his own wife. She couldn’t blame him, could she? For not loving her, for being unforgiving, for wanting to have a say in his own future. Back straight, she walked away.
* * *
“What did you say to Ash?” Maureen demanded once again.
Stuart spread his arms, palms upward in supplication. “Nothing. I swear it. We were having a perfectly normal conversation, and then he went berserk.” That was close enough to the truth, he decided. He didn’t want to upset Maureen any more than she already was.
“Charmaine wants to go back to Boston. It’s what she’s wanted all along, and maybe we should take her wishes into consideration,” he said reasonably.
Maureen came up off the sofa like a shot. “Ha! You don’t care a whit for Charmaine’s wishes or anyone else’s. You’re the most selfish man I’ve ever known! If I wasn’t carrying another child, you’d be doing your damnedest to see that Charmaine stays here with Ash.”
It wasn’t good for her to get excited like this. He took her arm and sat on the sofa, forcing her to come with him. “It was foolish of me to think I could make Charmaine marry someone she doesn’t love. I was foolish. . . . ”
“But she does love Ash, I just know it,” Maureen said despairingly. “And now he’s broken her heart and she’s miserable. You did this, somehow, and you’re going to have to fix it!”
When Charmaine had come back into the house, tears streamed down her face. She made not a sound, and it was the eeriest, most heart-breaking picture he’d ever seen. Charmaine with her back straight and her head held high and those tears that just wouldn’t stop. She hadn’t answered anyone’s questions, she’d climbed the stairs without making a sound and closed herself in her room. That had been hours ago, and there hadn’t been so much as a stirring from that room since.
And he should know. He’d pressed his ear to the locked door of her bedroom more than once, straining to hear something — anything. If he hadn’t heard the bed squeak just once, he would have broken the door down to make sure Charmaine was all right.
Fix it?
“I don’t think I can, Maureen.”
Charmaine opened the window and welcomed the cold air that rushed over her body. Some time ago she’d gone through the ritual of preparing herself for bed, removing her dress and stockings, washing her face and braiding her hair. Her chemise would do for sleepwear tonight.
Cold air washed over her bare arms and her damp face. She should be dry by now, completely drained of tears, but when she least expected it they came back.
She knew, had known all along, that Ash didn’t love her. How could he? She’d been forced upon him like those cattle Daddy had tried to give him. But things had changed, hadn’t they? She and Ash had laughed and talked and begun to appreciate one another. He had to feel something for her besides lust.
But apparently any woman would do.
A fresh onslaught of tears took her by surprise. This was his way of getting revenge. Forced to marry her against his will, he’d made her love him, he’d made her think that they could have a life together. He’d used her body and her heart against her, asked her to stay forever, made her think he needed her . . . made her think she needed him.
And then, when she’d been certain of their future and her love, he’d taken it away. Without warning, without care. With a few simple words that shook her faith and her love.
He’d surely been pretending all along. Their brief marriage had been as much a charade as the masked ball. Only instead of black leather he’d worn a much more complete mask. The mask of a caring and tender man. A mask of love and longing.
He was an actor, like his mother. A very good one to be able to pretend so well. At least she had the comfort of having never confessed her true feelings. Ash would never know how much she’d come to love him.
Perhaps one day she’d be able to pretend herself. To pretend that she hadn’t hoped for so very much from this unexpected marriage. To pretend that her heart and her soul weren’t irrevocably crushed. Maybe she’d even be able to fool herself . . . but she doubted it.
The knock on the door was so soft she thought for a moment she’d imagined it. As she turned away from the window it came again. She didn’t want to see or speak to anyone, not tonight.
“Charmaine, dear, are you awake?” Howard’s whisper was hoarse and soft.
She didn’t answer. Surely if he thought she was asleep he’d go away. Anything he had to say to her would wait until morning.
“Charmaine?” he called again, and the doorknob rattled slightly. Fortunately, it was locked.
She took a silent step closer to the door. What on earth was he thinking, coming to her room at this time of night? It was highly inappropriate and very unlike the Howard Stillwell she knew.
But then, the man she’d faced in the study was very unlike the Howard she remembered. Desperate, angry, insistent.
“Don’t worry, my poor dear Charmaine. I’ll take care of you,” he whispered. “You have my word on that.” The doorknob moved, ever so slightly, as if he were checking again to make sure it was locked.
There was a slight brushing sound, as if he ran his hands over the door or leaned against it. She didn’t move, afraid that if he heard her he wouldn’t go away.
“We don’t need them,” he said softly, after the passing of a few silent minutes. Surely he thought her to be asleep. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t made so much as a sound. “We have . . . each other.”
Charmaine hugged her arms to herself, warding off the sudden chill that had nothing to do with the night air. There was something very wrong with Howard whispering so intimately at her door. We don’t need them. Them, of course, being Felicity and Ash.
That in itself was disturbing, but was not nearly as troublesome as those whispered words each other. As if they were a team or a . . . a couple.
No matter what Ash said, she was not returning to Boston with Howard. The very idea was suddenly more than distressing. It was revolting. She’d been blind to the real Howard just as surely as she’d been blind, for so long, to the real Ash.
No one could be trusted.
There was the sound of a soft footfall in the hallway, as Howard finally moved away from her door. Charmaine sighed with relief, and vowed with a shudder to lock her door every night until he left.
Twenty-One
Her things were left on the doorstep sometime before dawn, in a trunk that had been neatly packed and quietly delivered. It was a final blow, a dismal reminder that her marriage was over.
A marriage she’d never wanted, a marriage she’d sworn from the beginning to leave behind.
Charmaine spent most of the morning Monday hiding in her room and unpacking her clothes. She didn’t want to face Howard. She didn’t want to face anyone.
She tried to keep her mind on the simple tasks at hand. Hanging the dresses in her wardrobe, folding her blouses and skirts and underthings and placing them in the proper drawers in the massive chest against one wall. She noted a blouse that needed to be mended, and a skirt that she might as well dispose of, it was so tattered at the hem. But her mind invariably wandered to Ash and the farm, and she even found herself wondering what he was eating and if he was sleeping.
When the knock on her door came, her heart lurched into her throat. She didn’t want to speak to Howard, not after that odd whisper at her door last night. But the door swung slowly open and Jeanette slipped into the room, closing the door behind her.
“Are you all right?” Jeanette appeared to be truly concerned, with a frown on her pretty face and hands clenched tightly at her waist.
“Of course,” Charmaine said in her most reasonable voice. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
The answer seemed to satisfy Jeanette, for the moment.
“Why are you unpacking all these clothes?” Jeanette took a skirt from the bottom of the trunk and shook it out to loose the wrinkles. “You should take out what you’ll need for the week and choose a traveling outfit and leave the rest packed,” she said as she refolded the skirt neatly.
“I’m not leaving.”
Jeanette stopped, and held the folded skirt to her chest. “Well then, what are you going to do? Howard said you’d be traveling with us.”
Howard. She had a feeling he had more to do with this than she knew. “I haven’t told him yet that I’ve decided definitely to stay in Salley Creek. When we spoke about it last I did say that perhaps something could be arranged, but . . . but it was a lie. I had no intention, even before . . . of leaving.”
Jeanette sat on the edge of the bed, the skirt now a wadded ball in her hands. “You’re staying.”
“Mother will need my help,” Charmaine said sensibly, “and besides . . . there’s nothing in Boston for me, not really.”
“What about your seminars and lectures with Howard?”
She couldn’t tell Jeanette about the odd whisper at her door last night, or how Howard’s words sent unpleasant chills up her spine. “I’m needed here.”
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