Wadding the nightgown and robe into a ball, she walked over to the little stove used to heat the room in winter. She opened the metal door. It clanked against the other side as she shoved the garments into the grate. Grabbing the sulphurs off the top, she struck one and tossed it in. For a moment the sulphur flared and the material around it darkened, but then the flame sputtered, dwindled. Failed.
Like hell. She grabbed the whiskey decanter off the dresser, grunting in disgust at the sparkling play of light through its amber depths. It hadn’t just been Brad’s charm and the nightgown that had done her in. The whiskey had done its part. For a vile-tasting concoction, it had a sneaky way of working its way under a woman’s inhibitions and shaking them loose. Dumping the contents on the nightgown, she gave it a second to soak in.
This time when she tossed in the match, the response was much more satisfying. Flames sprang up with a whoosh, filling the interior before flashing outward. She jumped back then watched the hungry fire devour the expensive gown. In a very short time the nightgown and everything it had represented were nothing more than a bit of ash.
Good
.
It only took a minute to dress, roll on her thin wool stockings, and stomp into her shoes. Another to stuff yesterday’s clothes in the satchel. She’d pay for the careless stuffing later with a good hour of ironing, but maybe she’d just burn them, too. Maybe she’d burn everything that made her remember the fiasco of this wedding. As she laced up her shoes, she knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. She had her pride, and Brad had ground it into the dust—with her permission. Darn, that’s what stung the most. She’d done this to herself. Brad had given her a bunch of sweet talk and she’d fallen for it.
Grabbing up her satchel, she headed to the kitchen. The stove was cold. She poked at the coffeepot sitting on top. It slid across the burner. Empty. So much for her mother’s caution to contain her normal morning grumpiness so she wouldn’t upset Brad. According to her mother, the way Brad treated her after the wedding night and the consideration she showed in kind would set the tone for the marriage. She recentered the pot on the burner. From the looks of things, the next fifty years were going to be war.
The silence of the house pressed in on her. Looking around the kitchen, she couldn’t help but wonder if everything was as Amy had left it before she’d gotten sick. It was cleaned up, but had it changed? In the hutch beside the door opposite the stove sat the bright, cheery dishes with their yellow rose pattern that Elijah had worked so hard to get for Amy. He’d worked a second job for months to buy those dishes for her as a wedding present. From the day Amy had wistfully remarked on their beauty in the mercantile, nothing would do for Elijah but that she have them. It had been a wonderful gesture, complicated by the fact that because it was a secret, Amy had begun to suspect Elijah had another woman who made demands on his time. It had been quite the summer social when that situation exploded. Before that day, no one had even suspected Amy had a temper.
Smiling at the memory, Evie opened the hutch door and touched the pretty yellow rose on a delicate cup. Elijah’s love had not been one-sided. Everything in the house had been decorated around that one special gift. The yellow-checked tablecloth draped over the large table was the exact color of the rose. The theme was picked up in yellow curtains with white lace trim. All the chairs around the table bore bright yellow cushions. She turned slowly, just absorbing the depth of love and hope that had gone into this home. There had been a lot. With a sigh, she closed the hutch door. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking. If fate wouldn’t allow Amy and Elijah to have a life together, what in heaven made her think she and Brad had a chance?
The silence grew heavier, her anger sharper, and that deep inner pain stronger. Tears burned the back of her eyes. She blinked them away. She would not cry about this. This might be the reality of her life, the consequence of her choice, but it wasn’t going to break her. She glanced around the cheerful, hope-filled interior. The honeymoon was over.
Grabbing up her satchel, she headed out the back door. Dew beaded the grass and hung in the air in a thick mist. The day had all the makings of a scorcher. Her destination stood one hundred feet behind the house. The small barn reflected the same care as the house. To the right of the double doors rested her wedding buggy, still decorated with bottles, cans, white ribbons. Hope. The painted wooden sign with the words “A bright future, here we come” hung perfectly aligned on the back. There was no way she was riding back into town with that monstrosity, making her a laughingstock because of her situation. She also wasn’t walking back into town lugging her satchel like a beggar. Brad might have ground her pride in the dust, but she didn’t need to announce it to the world.
Dropping the satchel she spun around and marched back into the kitchen and picked out the biggest knife she could find. Ignoring the heat and the blinding sunshine, she marched to the buggy and started hacking. It was a very satisfying half hour, cutting the geegaws and good wishes from that buggy. As she sawed on the thick rope holding the sign to the buggy back, she heard a footstep behind her.
“I take it the honeymoon’s over?”
Evie spun around. Jackson Burchett leaned against the side of the barn, idly twirling his dark brown hat in his hand, his long blond hair blowing about his shoulders. On another man hair that long and that color should have looked feminine, but on Jackson it just gave the aura of a Viking warrior, accentuating the strong line of his jaw and the amusement in his blue eyes. Five years ahead of her in school, she didn’t know him as well as she knew his sister Lori, who was a couple years younger than her, but she knew him well enough to know she was not in the mood this morning for the swipe of Jackson’s wit. She pointed the knife at him. “Don’t start with me, Jackson.”
He held up his hands. “I never start with anyone before coffee.”
“Good. That philosophy could keep you alive.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’ve had your morning coffee either.”
She hadn’t had a lot of things she should have. “No, I haven’t.”
“Want me to make some?”
And give him an excuse to linger? “Not particularly.”
His eyebrows lifted. She ignored the invitation to confide. Instead, she went back to work on the darn rope that held the sign. No matter how hard or how fast she sawed, the strands refused to separate. She was acutely aware of Jackson watching, the thoughts that must be going through his mind, the pity she’d likely find in his gaze if she were stupid enough to look up. Damn it. She wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve. Why wouldn’t the darn rope cut?
Jackson’s hand covered hers. A wicked-looking hunting knife flashed in her field of vision. The rope she’d been futilely sawing split like butter under a hot knife. A mental picture of how easily that knife could glide through human flesh filled her imagination. She blinked away the image. That wasn’t a portrait she wanted to paint.
Jackson slid the knife back into its sheath on his belt. He held out his hand. With a sigh she placed hers in it. His touch didn’t contain that ripple of shock that Brad’s did. And when she stood before him, she didn’t feel small and delicate. Which was just as well. For all his easy humor, she’d never gotten the sense that Jackson was safe, and she definitely didn’t need to hop from the frying pan into the fire. Brushing off her skirts, she asked, “So, why are you here?”
“Brad sent me over. He had an emergency he had to tend to. He said to go on and have breakfast. He’d be back likely before you were done.”
She just bet. “How considerate of him. And what does he expect me to eat?”
Jackson picked up a dark wicker basket and lifted the lid. “Millicent sent this over.”
The scents of bacon and ham rose to fill the space between them.
“Millicent said there’s pancake batter already mixed up to go with the ham and bacon. She also included some fresh-picked blueberries, if you’re interested.”
Evie loved blueberry pancakes, but she wasn’t going to sit here like a pet dog waiting for Brad. And she wasn’t going to explain herself to Jackson. She turned back to the wagon. Switching the knife to her left hand, she flexed the fingers on the right, releasing the cramping muscles. There was one bottle still hanging off the cart.
“Could you put that in the kitchen please?”
Jackson eyed her as if he knew she had no intention of waiting for Brad. “He really couldn’t help leaving, Evie. It was important.”
“Maybe I want to be important, too. At least important enough to warrant a good-bye when left alone on my wedding night.”
Well, shoot. She hadn’t meant to say that. Jackson didn’t have an immediate response to that, which was probably good, because she might have poked him with the knife, she was so furious. He dropped the lid on the basket and straightened. She went to work on that bottle.
“To be fair, Rev’s not used to being married.”
He couldn’t be serious. She sawed harder. The bottle rattled against the wooden side. Her breath came in an uneven rhythm. “Well, neither am I.” The bottle thudded to the ground. She tossed the knife beside it, coming to a decision. “But I can tell you right now, I won’t be for much longer.”
TWO HOURS LATER, she was still married, her temper was still frayed, and she was no closer to having someone to take it out on than she had been when she woke up that morning, but if Herschel Wallinger, the local lawyer, kept treating her like a pet dog who’d momentarily lost her senses, she might move him up the list. The man was unbearably pompous.
“The best thing you can do, Mrs. Swanson, is to go home and wait for your husband.”
No man that short, spindly, and especially that annoying should ever take that tone with an irritated woman. Evie tightened her grip on her bonnet, struggling for control. “Pardon me, but for a lawyer, you don’t seem to know much.”
The solid wooden chair groaned as Herschel leaned back and steepled his hands in front of his chest. “I know enough that you won’t be getting a divorce if the Reverend doesn’t want one.”
The urge to smack the smile off his face grew overwhelming. Evie might be a woman, but she wasn’t stupid. The only thing that was guaranteed in the law was the fact that there was always a loophole. “I realize it might be difficult to get a divorce without the Reverend’s approval, but certainly there must be some exceptions to that rule.”
“No.”
She didn’t believe him. The man was as white as the underbelly of a fish. She’d thought at first that it was a good sign. Surely a man who spent all his time locked up in this gloomy office, surrounded by books, would have the information she wanted, but she might have been wrong. Herschel might actually be hiding in his books. “There’s no way the rules can be bent?”
“I suppose, if you have enough money and enough influence in the right places, concessions could be made.” His gaze traveled from her hastily pinned-up hair down over her torso, no doubt taking note of the serviceable material of her blouse and the dust clinging to the cuff of the sleeve. “Do you have money and influence?”
He knew darn well she didn’t. He just wanted to hammer home the point that she hadn’t considered the ramifications when she’d entered his office, wanted to play omnipotent male to her helpless female. And if the laws of the country weren’t laid out so he could, she’d argue him into the ground. Herschel knew the law, but he wasn’t particularly agile mentally.
“No.”
Herschel sighed and smoothed the waxed end of his heavy moustache. “A marriage is always easier when a woman accepts the natural order.”
“Thank you for your advice.”
“I’m sure the Reverend will be a most considerate husband if you strive to please him. If you don’t mind me saying so, I think a man of God is ideally suited to provide the discipline you need.”
“So I’ve been told.”
By her mother. By her uncle. She’d even heard it whispered on the street as she marched to Herschel’s office. And now Herschel himself, a virtual stranger, felt obligated to point it out and seemed to feel she’d be grateful for the information. Evie stood clutching her satchel to her chest as if her last hope rested within it and let her lips tremble slightly as she held out her hand to the officious prig, dressed in his perfectly white, perfectly starched shirt with his perfectly waxed moustache that overwhelmed his narrow face. “Thank you so much for your time.”
He took her hand. Instead of just grazing her fingertips with his, he held it, keeping her put. The utter rudeness of the presumption froze her in place. The sweaty dampness of his hand repulsed her.
“If you confide your fears to your husband, I’m sure you’ll find he’s a reasonable man.”
“Like you?”
It was the smugness in his “yes” that snapped the hold she had on her temper. She let the satchel slip. It dropped onto the open inkwell, toppling the black liquid all over the papers, the blotter, and the light oak grain of the equally pretentious desk.
Herschel leapt to his feet. “Oh my God! You did that on purpose!”
She gave him her sweetest smile. “Try being reasonable about it.”
“Reasonable?!” he sputtered, diving for the inkwell, thought better of it as his shirt brushed a clean part of the blotter, and jumped back, eyes glued to the horror of spreading ink. “You’re crazy.”
No, but she was angry.
A hand closed around her upper arm from behind. She jumped and swung a wild fist. Brad caught it easily, not looking at her, all his attention on Herschel, a pleasant smile on his face. How had he avoided making the door squeak? “My wife has a different definition of
reasonable
than most people.”
“She needs a firm hand.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Brad’s grip was just short of painful. A glance out of the corner of her eye revealed the set angle of his chin. He was angry. Well, so was she.