He returned bearing a piece of paper in his hands, and a small pot of ink with a quill.
“You know how to read and write, I presume, Clara,” he said, his voice an authoritative rumble, handing her the quill. “I obtained the marriage certificate about a week ago. Sign here.”
Unable to speak a word, she took the proffered writing utensil and did as she was told. When she was finished, he signed his own name. She sank back into her chair and he sat across from her again. For just a moment, the house around them was silent, and when he spoke again, Kenneth’s tone was as deep and impenetrable as his eyes.
“Now we are married, Clara. I have to warn you. Ranch life is tough, and yes, to me, you seem like someone who might be more in the way than helpful. But I trust that since you answered my ad, somewhere underneath all ‘yer fancy clothes, you’ve got a brave soul. Because you’re gonna need it.”
She almost did not trust herself to speak, and quite suddenly, her voice was coming out of her seemingly without her own will involved.
“Now that we’re married,” she spoke thickly, “Are we going to—I mean, do you expect—” and here she broke off, her own proper upbringing and sense of decency preventing her from speaking further.
He took another long look at her, and it seemed to be eons before he spoke again. There was something that was definitely amused about his expression, but when he spoke, his voice was entirely serious.
“As I told you before, the marriage is for the neighbors. I know I’m not from England—“ and here, he broke off into a smile that warmed his entire face—“But I do have some common decency, Clara. First of all, call me Kenneth. We’re married, after all. Second, I won’t have your reputation sullied by not giving you the proper position in my household. I expect nothing more from you than what I asked for in my ad—I need a lady to run my household, ‘specially now it’s spring and I’m needed more and more out in the field. I can promise you, Miss Clara, that I will never touch you without your permission—I’m no animal, after all—unless that be somethin’ you yourself desire.”
Clara’s heart was beating so loudly she was sure he could hear it over the ticking of the clock, the only sound to permeate the room after Kenneth finished his speech. The rush of emotions that came over her in that moment was as confusing as it was heady—gratefulness for him not breaching her sense of propriety, anger at his underestimation, worry that she herself would not be able to live up to both sets of expectations, and above all, a sense of respect for this forthright man who was not afraid to speak her mind. She had met far too many people in her own life who spoke in couched terms and did not make themselves clear. She was English, gently brought up in a way, but she liked the no-nonsense attitude on Kenneth Westeros a great deal. Ignoring the funny prickle in her belly at his use of the word desire, Clara finally rose definitively from the table and walked to the kitchen door. Just before she exited the room, she turned to her husband of all of five minutes.
“Thank you, Kenneth. You can trust me not to let you down,” she said, and retired to her room.
* * *
Suddenly, the house seemed full.
Kenneth could not remember the last time when his home seemed so organized or full of life. Certainly, Sally had done her share, sweeping up and wiping down his boots when he got mud on them, but it was an entirely different feeling when he walked into the main room and found an Oriental rug on the floor. The changes had started out small—crystal beading on lampshades that suddenly cloaked whole rooms in whatever color the silk happened to be, good hearty wine to be had with roast chicken in the evenings. They seemed to migrate from Clara’s room out towards the whole house. He could not remember the last time when somebody had cared enough to make the living space just that—a place to live in.
Rather, actually, he could.
Barbara had never had a touch for the feminine, being a big, strapping woman herself, but she had added her own gentle touches to the home—soft pillows here and there, fresh field flowers in a simple vase on the kitchen table. As Kenneth considered the ring of embroidery featuring birds in flight on the seat cushion outside of Clara’s room, he wondered why his chest felt like it was tightening a little bit every time he noticed these things.
It was true, after several months, Miss Clara Wittibrew was beginning to grow on him. She was by no means, the ideal helpmate he had envisioned. While she was an early riser and had no trouble settling into the daily schedule of the house, she struggled to anticipate certain needs—when to order feed, how to tie off the bales of hay to keep them neat. Her tiny frame, unaccustomed to hard labor, struggled under pitchforks and heavy buckets. And mostly she struggled with the animals, despite her kind nature not knowing how to demonstrate a mastery over them that allowed her to bend them to her will, a skill necessary in order to live a farm life. The cows’ teats did not respond to her incessant pulling, the pigs often got out of the pen. Once, he even caught her sunning her face on an especially wide post of the horse’s fence, freckles spattering her upturned nose, drinking in sunshine.
It was especially pleasant to have someone to sit across from at the table. He spent the day with the animals, and for all their healthy coats, grunts, whickers, and other normal animal sounds, they could not make up for adult conversation. With Barbara, there had been the normal rugged routine, with some laughter and jokes, but Clara seemed to know a great deal about the world that he had never imagined. She spoke often about growing up at the orphanage, particularly when it was she who prepared a roast or other sumptuous meal for the two of them. Thing had been rather on the shabby end when she was growing up, he gathered, and slowly, inch by inch and week by week, he warmed to her, feeling the same way about her he had felt when he discovered a nest of foxlings near his chicken coop. He knew that without their mother, they would likely not survive in the harshness of the elements, but he could not help but want to protect them, anyway. He knew that Clara struggled, but was fond of the smile that greeted him at the end of his long, silent days. She still did not know, as Barbara did, to bring him cool water mixed with ginger out in the heat of the day or when a storm was coming, as was evidenced by the day he caught her draping sheets on a clothesline outside when he heard the rumble of thunder. But there was something about that small, curvaceous form and curls that would never stay tamed that endeared her to him.
Not that he would ever say that aloud. Although he had called for help, he had meant what he told her on her first night there. He had been teasing her about the desire part, wanting only to see her blush. As long as he could remember Barbara, he would never touch another woman.
* * *
Lord, the man was a mystery.
Her first post as governess had not been easy, but as surely as she had weathered those storms, she was sure she could handle tending to Kenneth Westeros’ house. It seemed, however, that no matter how hard she tried, nothing she did could please the man.
When he got home at the end of a long day, she would try and have dinner hot and prepared on the table. He would sit down silently as she prattled on about this and that, Edward and Sara and England, and in the end grumble that he could have made the dinner by himself. She tried to beautify the house, only to catch him standing staring at all the lovely rugs she had brought in as if they were an alien form of life that had taken up residence in his home.
Frankly, Clara was exhausted. Although she did find herself wondering why she cared so much if her husband appreciated what she did. Possibly it was the absence of their physical side of their marriage, which, grateful as she was for it, seemed to create a deep hole somewhere in her, the part of her that left her lingering near the animals, much as they seemed determined not to give milk or be fine for a brushing, just so she could feel their warmth beneath her small form. Possibly it was the fact that whenever she did manage to get a smile out of Kenneth, it made her feel a funny sort of stirring deep in her belly that was so strange she often found herself clamping a hand on her lowe
r abdomen to staunch it. Or she would simply remind herself that it was men who were the lustful creatures, and not properly brought up ladies, and the odd shame she would feel would drown out everything else.
She had just finished wiping off the kitchen table and had a pot of hearty beef stew simmering when she realized sundown had come and gone and there was still no Kenneth, kicking his boots off at the door and sitting down to eat. A small bubble of panic rose in her throat; he might be many things, this mysterious husband of hers, but he was never late. Dinner was always promptly at eight.
Outside, the wind howled. Fat droplets of rain stained her apron as she stepped off the deck to head towards the barn. Perhaps he was there. Her hunch rang true as she walked into the spacious, dark area where the horses slept and saw Kenneth’s outline as he leaned his upper body on one of the stalls. There was a nervous energy about him, and he looked almost startled as she approached him, setting the lantern she had brought with her down on one of the wooden posts.
“You never came to dinner,” she said softly, touching him tentatively on the shoulder, as the mood seemed to call for it.
He turned towards her, and in the light, his face was gentler and at the same time more excited than she had ever seen it. His voice was quiet as he said, “Betsy’s going into labor.”
Clara was taken aback. She now understood the air of urgency he had about him, and she felt an excitement that matched his growing within her. Instinctively, she knew that the night ahead of them was long and difficult, and that her own ineptitude with the animals at that point was not going to stop her from participating in this event.
“I believe,” she said, after a moment’s pause, “That we need hot water and fresh cloths.”
* * *
The welcoming of a new animal onto a farm is often as momentous as the birth of a new baby. He remembered purchasing Betsy when she was just wild, and breaking her in, the first in a long successful line that was the foundation of the ranch. He could scarce believe that it was her time now.
As the mare paced back and forth in her stall, he could feel her anxiety grow. As the hours marking her labor stretched deep into the night, a fine sheen of sweat began to take over her body, and her whinnies pierced the night air, as sharp and evocative as human cries. At around midnight, Betsy lay on her side, the bulbous, bright sac of amniotic fluid protruding from her nether regions. Her grunts grew tired, and often, the mare would just lay her entire head back on the hay, great shudders wracking her entire body. He could see the foal’s legs through the sac as Betsy pushed and shoved, and even though he had seen it before, he could help but be amazed at the strength of the female body in all its species.
Including, interestingly, that of Clara.
It was she who piled straw underneath the mare to make her more comfortable. When it seemed that Betsy was too tired to go on, it was Clara’s hand that stroked her brow gently and whispered words of encouragement in her long, pointed ear. Amazingly, when the foal finally broke through the sac, before he could even react, Clara was clearing fluid from its nostrils, and its first, hesitant whinny rang out into the night.
For the rest of his life, Kenneth would remember what his wife looked like in that moment.
Tendrils of hair snaked around her white neck and her apron was stained with blood. When the mare finally dropped the foal fully, large and new and wet and shining into the world, Clara’s blue eyes filled with a wonderment he had thought disappeared with the first flush of adulthood. He beheld the scene as she did, with a tenderness, and he was amazed at her simultaneous grace and stamina. She had weathered the long night with him and Betsy, and had, in that moment, become a more integral part of the farm than she had ever expected.
In the wee hours of the morning, the colt finally found enough strength to try and rise on the legs that gave it is namesake. He and Clara lay on the straw, watching Betsy attend to the baby horse, and the air around them was thick with the smell of birth and all the unspoken things that had no need to be said. He watched a smile, exhausted but happy, spread over her face and found himself thinking, quite suddenly, about what she would look like with a child of her own.
“Barbara and I,” he found himself saying, “We never had children.”
Clara glanced over at him, a tiny wrinkle of concern in her thick eyebrows. “Barbara, your first wife?”
He nodded.
“How many did you want to have?” she asked.
He thought back. “We always said we wanted seven, enough to ride each of the brand new horses I would bring in. One for each year we had been married.”
Her eyes filled with a new light of understanding. “Oh,” she said softly, and slowly, unconsciously, her hand found his through the hay. He thought the touch would be offensive to him somehow, but he felt, instead, like he was gaining great strength from the unbelievably small hand holding his.
“The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her. She seemed so healthy and her mamma had had five boys besides her, so everything should have been fine. She was just a girl of seventeen when I met her, but such was her lot in life, and after seven years, we just had to accept it. I was almost at peace with it, I truly was, until that last year.”
“What happened?” Clara asked, her voice gentle.
It hurt to remember. He felt the groan in his voice as he answered her. “First, she started complaining that she was tired all the time. It was not so strange, because she was always so helpful with the hard things around the farm, but then came the days she couldn’t even rise up out of bed. Then came the coughs, and the nights she couldn’t breathe. And all I could do was stand and watch because there was no cure, there was nothing…” He trailed off, unable to continue.
For many hours, they again said nothing. Little by little, he let himself feel the grief of the year that had passed, the year of being alone, felt it ebb out of him into the hand that held him. And finally, there was a peace, a sense of being drained of built-up poison, as if someone had pricked him with a pin and it was all completely gone. When it was over, he was just Kenneth again, as new reborn as the colt. Day was breaking.
“Look,” said Clara. “It’s the sun.”
* * *
Clara twisted her head this way and that. She changed into her best gown, the blue silk Mrs. Wreight had said matched her eyes exactly. She pinned her only piece of jewelry, a phoenix brooch, onto the dress. And then she collapsed onto her bed, groaning in frustration.
The thing was was that ever since that night Betsy’s colt was born, everything had changed.
Suddenly, overnight, Kenneth Westeros had gone from being a gruff ranch man into somebody who was the center of the world. Clara did not know what to do with herself. Only a week had passed, but now, all she could think about was the warmth of Kenneth’s hand in hers as he told her about his wife. She had felt so incredibly honored that he had chosen her to share the gentle side of himself with. What she had felt as he told her about staying by his sick wife’s bedside was as familiar to her as the rain; it was what she herself had felt when she was told that she was to leave the children. She understood his helplessness and rage so well as if it were her own.
So how to get him to notice her?
She blushed at the thought. The formidable Mrs. Smythers did not offer any advice in her book about how to attract your husband; in fact, all of her tips seemed to be on how to best keep your husband at bay, whether it was by nagging or starting an argument in the evening, or feigning a headache. But perhaps there had been something she missed?
Time passed. The seconds on the clock dragged on into minutes, and the house was quiet. Slowly, lulled by the sleeplessness of previous nights, Clara’s chin drooped towards her chest. The mustard-colored cover of the raunchy yet prim little book slowly drifted shut, the pages fluttering with the rise and fall of her bosom. How much time passed, she did not know, but she awoke to the sound of a manly chuckle in the room.
Coming to was sweet, and she was r
efreshed. The feeling faded as quickly as it had come as she realized that the book was no longer in her lap. She got up and shook out her skirts, looking all around her for evidence of its fall. Confusion grew, and was swiftly replaced with horror as she realized that she was far from alone in the room.
Kenneth was sitting on the edge of her bed, thumbing through a book with a familiar yellow cover. Her horror intensified as he turned page after page, shaking with silent laughter and shaking his head. He had found her book. And now he found her ridiculous. She shook out of her daze and took a step forward, and at that moment, the brooch that had been pinned rather loosely to her dress decided to make its clattering way to the floor, startling Kenneth out of his quiet reprieve and highlighting for her the sheet idiocy of the situation.
He put the book down and took a step towards her, amusement lighting his features. “Good morning, sunshine,” he said, and she felt her face redden impossibly. How dare he? How dare he intrude on her private chambers, on her—her private time?
“Why did you take my book?”
He wrinkled his brow in confusion, eyes still alight. “Does a husband not have the right to visit his wife and take an interest in what it is she occupies herself with?” He paused, waiting for a beat or two, and then asked the inevitable question. “Why is it that you’re reading this book, Clara?”
She clammed up. She felt caught, trapped in a cage of her own making, unable to undo the damage done and likewise unable to take a step forward out of it. How to explain, how to put the vague stirrings into words without abandoning decency? How to allow yourself to express the vulnerability that would put you on an uncharted map where you were neither the captain of the ship or able to direct the rudder?
So she did what she had always done, ever since her arrival in the states all those months ago. She jammed her lips tight together, allowed her face to flush scarlet, and ran.
ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) Page 16