She was right, of course. She had asked for nothing, and that was exactly what she had gotten in return. It wasn't her fault she wasn't Kirsten, didn't have Kirsten's long blond curls, her sweet high voice, fine bones, girlish smile. But then again, it wasn't his fault, either.
"Been a long time since you got a new dress and we did something special, huh, Liv? Would you like that?"
"You know what I'd like, Spencer. You know what I've wanted from the day we married."
"Ask me for something else, Olivia. Something I can give you. Anything else."
Just don't ask me for a child. Don't ask me to bring another child into a world full of disease and danger and misery, because I won't.
"They're all I want, Spencer. I can't seem to have them myself, that's hard enough to live with. But these children . . . Spencer, I know I'll love them like my own."
All right, he was selfish. He knew that. He was cowardly. He knew that, too. But he was saving them both from true heartache. It was disappointment only that drove Olivia to tears each month when her time came. She didn't know real despair. She hadn't ever lost anything as precious as a child.
"They'll be a help to you, Spence. The boy is old enough now to help in the fields." She thought for a minute and then nodded. "Yes, I'm sure Neil is nearly ten. And Louisa is eleven, at least, or twelve. She could be a blessing around this house."
"There's another, isn't there?" He knew there was. The one that had been born on the day her mother died. A baby that couldn't be more dian two or three. "That one gonna be a help, too?"
Olivia looked wistful and embarrassed as she smiled at him. It hurt to see the hope shining so brightly in those dark eyes, so he studied the edge of the tablecloth. "She's gonna be the biggest help of all. She's never known a mama, Spencer. Josephina is gonna make my wishes come true."
"Three children!" He struggled for a breath, but couldn't seem to draw one. Christ! Children in the house again. How could she expect him to bear it? "Do you realize what you're asking?"
"I'm asking for a life for us, Spence. A family. I can't give you one ... it doesn't seem. So I'm asking you to let me do the only thing I can."
He took his forehead in his hand, his elbow resting on the table. "How many times are we going to have this same damn conversation, Olivia? How many times do I have to tell you I don't want any more children? That I didn't marry you to have children?"
"What
did
you marry me for, Spencer?" she asked. "For a warm meal every night and a warm bed once a week? For help with the cows and the chickens? Is that the good life you promised me?"
He examined the blue cloth as if it held the answers to her questions. "I promised you a roof over your head and food in your belly. I promised you someone to grow old with."
She shook her head sadly. "I thought that meant someday, Spencer. I didn't know you planned to start getting old so soon."
"Well, you were wrong."
"Seems I was wrong about a lot of things, but that's neither here nor there, is it?"
"Sorry you gave up taking care of old Mr. Larsen? Sorry that instead of reading to that blind coot all day and going home at night to Remy and Bess and your pa that you're stuck in this house with me?" He waved his arm at the sheer size of the kitchen, which was big enough to accommodate all the children he and Kirsten had planned on having. "If you liked being an old maid so much, how come you went and married me?"
"Because I thought I could make you happy," she said so honestly that he felt ashamed of himself for asking. "But I can't. Not the way things are going. That's why I've got to do this." She reached out, her hands so soft when they cradled his cheeks, her voice so tender, that it pierced his heart in a way that harsh words never would. "I know what Peter and Margaret meant to you and I know how much you miss them. Hard to believe the trick fate played on you—first taking your children and then giving you a barren wife to replace the one you loved...."
"Don't do this," he begged her, pulling away from her touch. Her warm softness was more than he could bear. "Don't do this to yourself and don't do it to me. I don't want more children, Olivia, truly I don't. Not my own, not anyone else's."
"But ..."
"But you do."
She nodded, almost guiltily, as if she were the one being selfish. As if her wanting a family wasn't the most natural thing in the world. Hadn't he wanted one? Hadn't he thought nothing on earth could make him happier? Did he have the right to deny her that chance?
"Why now, Olivia? Why today of all days?" Didn't she realize that it was just five years ago to the day that Margaret had come down with the fever? That his whole world had turned upside-down and never was righted again?
"It's my birthday," she said simply. No accusations, no display of temper. But that was Olivia.. Kirsten would have made a party for them all and baked some genoise to celebrate. Olivia just sat there quietly. "I'm twenty-eight."
"I know how old you are," he said, more than a little annoyance creeping into his voice. "You could have reminded me. I'd have gotten you something if you'd told me."
"You know what I want, Spencer. And I've already sent for them." She tried to make the words sound final, as if she had the authority to simply send for her nieces and nephew and that there was little he could do. If she could only stop her lip from quivering and the tears from pooling in her eyes, he might have been convinced.
As it was, he knew that all he had to do was tell her that his answer was still no and that would be the end of it for another few months. The subject would go away as it had before, only to resurface again sometime in the future. If he was lucky, it would disappear forever.
But there she sat, the woman who traipsed out to the fields in the rain to bring him a cup of hot tea and a dry towel, the woman who washed his sheets with lemon because he once told her he liked the smell, the woman who wished on stars for his happiness. She sat there with her hope pasted on her face like a treasure map to her heart and he knew he had no choice.
''Happy birthday then, Olivia." His voice cracked and he wasn't sure she understood him until she looked up. Beneath the tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks, he saw a tiny, tremulous smile. "When are they coming?"
"I told him to send them as soon as the threat of snow is past, since they'll have to take the stage from Milwaukee. Is that all right?"
He snorted. "Well, I guess that means I've got a little time to get used to the idea, anyway." He kept his disgust to himself. Julian Bouche's children in his house. Jeez. Any children would be bad enough, but Julian Bouche's? The man had tried to run away from his responsibilities all those years ago when Marion had found herself carrying and her father had found Julian at the train depot with a ticket to California. The bank was happy enough to let him go, the hint of scandal clinging to his fancy suit all the way to the job Henri Sacotte had arranged for his new son-in-law in Chicago. Now Julian wanted to dump his kids and head for greener pastures. And he wanted to leave Olivia's family holding the bag again.
They'd all managed to shelter Olivia the first time, pretending that the wedding of Marion Sacotte and Julian Bouche was something to be celebrated. Spencer hoped no one was going to expect him to shelter her again.
"So maybe a month from now? June, don't you think?" Olivia asked, stretching up to the top cupboard to put away the few supplies she had brought back from town. She was a good size for a woman, not so small as to be delicate, like his Kirsten had been, but not big and bulky like John Delisse's wife, who could probably whip half the men in Maple Stand if she was of a mind to.
No, he had to admit that Olivia was a good, good size, her shoulders ample, her hips full, and her waist tucked so that when she walked her bottom swayed. And when she let her chestnut mane down and brushed it before bed, it took all the will he had not to run his fingers through it. Sometimes, after Olivia was asleep, he would let her hair run through his fingers like a mountain stream. It was fluid and fresh and a dangerous thing to do, he'd found out more than once.
"If only," he said, and followed it with a sigh.
"Too soon or too late?" she asked.
"Hm?" He had lost the thread of the conversation, wishing again that he could allow himself to take her in his arms, enjoy the comforts of her body and damn the consequences. More and more lately, thoughts of what he was denying himself came unbidden into his mind.
"Did you want them to come sooner, or later?"
"Who? Oh, the children . . ."
Did he want them to come sooner or later?
Was she joking? "I don't suppose . . ." he started, but then stopped himself. He could do this one thing for her and make her happy. And what would it cost him? He didn't know these children, didn't love them. He would simply keep it that way. And maybe, just maybe, having them in the house would take his mind off other things, like the way her gold watch swayed across her bosom when she made a sudden movement, as she had now, reaching for his cup to refill it.
"Spencer? You aren't going to change your mind, are you?" she asked.
"They can come, Olivia. I said they could, didn't I? You ever known me to go back on my word? I'll even clean out my workroom for them. The girls can sleep in there. The boy can bunk in the barn."
Olivia's jaw dropped and her eyes widened until he was looking at two enormous black pot lids, just staring at him without any comprehension.
"You didn't think—" he began. "Not in Peter and Margaret's—The loft is—I couldn't—that is—" He stumbled to recover himself, taking a deep breath and then swallowing. "You know the loft belongs to Peter and Margaret, will always belong to Peter and Margaret. Your nieces and nephew are not to set foot into that room."
"But—" Olivia tried to argue.
Bile rose in his throat at the thought of dirty hands touching the dolls that Margaret had treasured. His head spun and his stomach lurched. Their clothes were in that room, the little dresses in which Margaret had looked so precious, the suit Peter had been so proud to have outgrown just a month or so before he died. All the little birds he and his son had carved together when he was teaching Peter to whittle perched on the top of the bookshelf there.
"Promise me, Olivia, that they'll never go into that loft. That, or I cannot let them come into my home. I cannot. Do you understand?"
Olivia understood all too well. She remembered clearly the time Spencer had caught her in the children's sleeping loft. She had gone up to dust, nearly taking her life in her hands on the little steps he had built for the children. How he had managed to come up after her, being so much bigger than she, and not have made a sound, she would never know. But suddenly he had been standing there, his head bent, his shoulders stooped over, seething with rage.
He had grabbed her wrist forcefully and yanked open her hand. Then with exquisite gentleness he had taken the coarse little wooden bird and laid it tenderly on the shelf. After examining the room with his dark eyes, he had backed halfway down the steps and then directed her to follow him, carefully guiding her feet onto each step. When his feet had hit the kitchen floor, he'd simply reached up and carried her off the ladder and set her down.
Then, with his jaw muscle twitching furiously, he had told her never to go up there again. "There's no railing anymore, Olivia. It's not safe," he had added harshly, but she wasn't sure whether he had been warning her about the ladder or himself.
It was a perfectly good room and she bet a boy like Neil, not that she knew him, but any ten-year-old boy, would adore being in the loft. It was like a bird's nest, where a child could perch and watch the world and fly from someday when he was grown. "Peter must have loved it up there," she said, hoping to soften her husband's resolve.
"He did." His lips were a thin line across his face, and the hollows in his cheeks pulsed with emotion so strong that she knew it took every ounce of self-control he had not to explode. But then she'd never met a man with more self-control. He held everything in, kept all his feelings to himself.
He hadn't always been that way. He and her brother, Remy, had been friends forever, and she'd watched a younger, wilder man challenge life at every turn. She'd seen him chase a greased pig at Kermiss celebrations and win nearly each and every autumn. She'd seen him drink beer after beer and laugh until his sides ached from too much food and too much drink and too much joy.
She'd seen every emotion he'd ever had written on his face and etched on the muscles of his body. The way his leg shook when he was nervous, the way he couldn't sit still when he was happy.
She'd seen him full of life, once upon a time. She'd seen him laugh, seen him cry, seen him so proud the day Peter was born that she thought he'd burst apart.
But all of that was before the diphtheria epidemic. Before twelve people in Maple Stand had died, and four of them had belonged to her husband. It was before he'd lost Kirsten and the children and his mother, too. Livvy had had such hope when she'd married him. Oh, she knew he didn't love her the way she had always loved him. She knew Remy had pushed him into it and she was a poor second choice, not much more than a housekeeper with whom he could . . . well . . .be a husband.
She hadn't wanted much, not for herself. All she had wanted was to bring back the Spencer Williamson she knew. To make him whole again. And she knew only one way to do that. But it seemed that wasn't to be.
Still, she had one chance left, and she couldn't afford to let it slip away over sleeping arrangements that could always be discussed again once Spencer had met the children, once he'd seen them as promises of all their tomorrows instead of memories of all his yesterdays. And he was right about the railing, after all.
"I won't let them go into the loft," she agreed.
"Children are a lot of work, you know." He pulled his pipe down from the rack above the fireplace and busied himself cleaning it with a small knife and a fresh pipe cleaner.