Jodi Thomas (8 page)

Carter ran his hand along the volumes as he walked through his study. For years he’d ordered books on how to do or grow everything. But not one told him how to be a husband.

He tapped the archway overhead as he crossed into his bedroom. Over the years he’d learned to move around below without lights by tapping the same places each time, reassuring himself that he was exactly where he thought.

Carter tugged at his shirt. Three steps to the left was a huge chair he often sat in while reading all night. Two steps to the right was his bed. As with everything in his life, all was in order. Blindfolded, he could have picked any of a hundred items in the room. His clothes were always in the same place. A lantern hung from the ceiling so that it offered the best light for reading. The matches were in a box directly underneath.

Only tonight all was not in exact order. A faint light shown from above his bed. When he’d built the rooms, Carter had added two vents. One in the hallway beneath the upstairs fireplace, for warmth, and a larger one in his underground bedchamber in case he ever needed a narrow escape route. The tunnel opening traveled the few feet from the ceiling of his room, to the floor of the only bedroom upstairs. The shaft had been disguised by thin slats of wood matching the floor above. To ensure he never accidentally stepped on the wood and caved the tunnel in, Carter placed the opening directly beneath the huge four-poster bed.

Until tonight he never knew that if a light were left on upstairs, it would filter down. He’d checked to make sure light didn’t travel up when he was underground. No one would ever notice his light shinning from below into the shadowy bedroom. But in the blackened underground, he noticed.

Carter stripped off his clothes, stretched out on his bed, and stared at the light above him. The glow was pale, no more than a sliver of moonlight would make through gingham curtains, but it was there. For a man who’d spent years sleeping in total blackness, it was bright indeed.

She was there. She was in the room he’d carefully decorated to look like a picture he’d seen in a catalog. He’d even put the music boxes on the shelves as if his mother had left them there. Only his mother would have had no use for music boxes, and he’d never wound them to see if they worked.

Carter rolled to his side and closed his eyes. With the vent at least he’d know she was safe. He could hear her moving about her room, and from the sounds, he knew what she was doing. Pouring water in the bowl, pulling back the bedcovers.

Carter rolled to his stomach and placed a pillow over his head. He didn’t want to think about what the woman was doing. There were enough times she’d be with him, she shouldn’t invade his thoughts when he was alone. He’d figured she’d alter his pattern of life slightly, not turn it upside down.

He forced himself to think of how he’d scrubbed the walls of the bedroom for days, trying to get all his parents’ blood off and how he’d burned the furniture and bedding. Then slowly he’d begun to rebuild the room as if somehow by making it normal his life would return to normal also. Samuel had helped him build the huge bed on the spot so large it couldn’t be moved by one man. He’d also brought Carter flyers from Fort Worth showing all the items he’d bought to place inside the room.

Now the woman claimed it as hers. A woman who was also settling into his thoughts.

Maybe tomorrow he’d tell her how she filtered into every thought. But that probably shouldn’t be the first thing they talked about. Besides, telling a woman you think about her when she’s not there seemed a rather foolish thing to admit.

Even with the pillow buffering, he heard the latch being released from the shutters in the bedroom above.

Carter sat up in bed. The woman had opened a window. On this cold rainy night she opened the window. The thought crossed his mind that she might be escaping, running away from him, but why wouldn’t she use the door four feet away? He’d done nothing to make her believe he’d hold her against her will.

Rolling to his back, he gave up trying not to listen. He heard the bedropes creak slightly as she crawled into bed. The light disappeared above him. She’d blown out the candle.

Carter lay perfectly still trying to hear her breathing. The ropes creaked again. She was settling in, he thought, and she hadn’t relatched the window and she wasn’t running away.

He’d never been more wide awake.

After several minutes he thought he heard her crying softly, then only silence.

Carter waited half an hour. There was no question of sleep when he knew a window upstairs was open. Finally he gave up and stood, pulling on his trousers with a sudden jerk. The only sound he made was a light tap at the top of first his bedchamber doorway and then a second later at the entrance to the hallway. He stepped between the sliding panels and into the cellar, then climbed the stairs two at a time.

Moving as silently as he could, Carter crossed the main room and stood at her door. He hesitated with his fingers already on the knob. What if she wasn’t asleep? The sight of him entering her room might frighten her. Though he’d given her no reason to fear him. The memory of the woman the sheriff had called Sarah flashed in his mind. She’d looked so frightened, and all she’d done was marry, just as Bailee had.

But he had to be safe. Since the night he’d returned home all those years ago, he double-checked every lock every night.

The need to secure his fortress won out. He opened her door and crossed to the windows. Carefully he closed the shutter and lifted the latch into place. Glanced at her, curled up in the middle of the bed, he couldn’t help but stare for a long moment. Her hair, unbound and spreading across the pillow, shone even in the faint light.

He left her room as silently as he’d come and returned to his bed. Now he could sleep; all was in order.

 

Bailee awoke late, thinking it was before dawn. When she sat up, she saw tiny slivers of light through the shutters and knew it was full sunrise. Somehow, the shutter she’d thought she’d opened must have drifted back into place.

She dressed as quickly as she could and hurried into the kitchen. There was no sign of Carter, but a half pot of coffee warmed on a corner of the stove. She went about making breakfast, finding the basics of stores, but nothing for baking, or canning, or even churning butter.

By the time Carter entered with a load of wood for the stove, she had a simple meal on the table. He looked surprised, but took his chair when she pointed to one. They ate in silence on mismatched china and a tablecloth worn thin from washing.

Bright sunlight shown through long thin windows over the kitchen area, and for the first time Bailee saw the room clearly. It was really far more livable than she’d thought last night. The furnishings were finely carved, not rough homemade. A spinning wheel stood in one corner, a rocker by the fire. A few pieces of china were faced out in a hutch, and an empty pie safe stood on the other side of the wood bin. Polished bookshelves framed the rock of the fireplace with copies of Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickens, Tennyson sliced in between catalogs for farming and gardening.

The books looked old, well cared for, and many times read.

A few things in the room seemed odd at second glance. A rifle stood in one corner, almost unseen in the shadows, with a box of bullets next to it. A thin bookshelf almost as tall as Carter stood near the door, but was empty except for an apple sitting on one shelf as though it were some prized heirloom.

“I have a few boxes in my wagon in town. Dishes and things I’ve made.” She didn’t add that they were things she had to pack in an hour’s time while her father bought her a wagon and team. “Maybe the next time you’re there, you could pick them up for me. I’d like to have them.”

She raised her gaze and wasn’t surprised to find him staring at her. The blue of his eyes hadn’t changed. She thought she saw an intelligence in their depths and wondered if he loved these books or if they were just decorations in his house like the music boxes no one wound and the china washstand that looked as if it had never been used.

Suddenly nervous, she stood and took her plate to the wash pan. “I made a list of a few things I could use from the store.” As she set a scrap of paper on the corner of the table, it suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea if this man she married had a dime to his name. What if he used all his money to pay her fine?

Bailee tried to be practical. “Since we’re married, I guess the oxen, if they’re still alive, belong to you, and the wagon as well. You can sell them if you wish, but I’d really like to keep my boxes.”

She fought back tears. They were stupid oxen, she’d swore at them many times on the trail, but they were hers. If he sold them he’d whittle her belongings down to a few crates. And if he refused to bring the boxes, she’d be left with broken mismatched dishes. Her father had only let her pack a few things that she’d made or had belonged to her mother. She’d stuffed them into crates so fast she doubted much of the china was still whole, but he’d wanted her out of his house before dawn.

Carter stood and collected his plate and cup. He brushed her arm slightly as he sat them in the sink. Without a word he downed his hat and rain slicker.

Bailee wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. The married couple who lived across the street from her father always seemed to be laughing. There was nothing funny about the silent man she followed out the door.

As he stepped off the porch, Bailee caught his arm. “I’ll have lunch ready at noon.”

He nodded without raising his eyes from where her fingers rested on his sleeve.

Bailee did what she’d seen the young wife across the street do a hundred times. “Have a good day, husband.” She leaned close and kissed him on the cheek.

Carter stepped away suddenly and almost ran for the barn. The three mangy dogs she’d caught a glimpse of the night before hurried after him.

Bailee smiled at her own boldness, feeling suddenly better than she had in weeks. If he didn’t like her actions, he was going to have to tell her. They might never have long talks by the fire, but somehow they’d settle in together. He might just offer the very thing she needed most in this world. A quiet place to rest for a while and heal.

She walked back into the house and laughed aloud as she noticed that the slip of paper she’d scribbled a grocery list on was now missing.

A few minutes later she heard the wagon pass the house and head up the road toward town.

T
HE SUN MANAGED TO DRY A THIN LAYER OF HARD dirt over the muddy street by the time Carter pulled into town. He gave Bailee’s list to one of the girls at Willard’s general store and walked over to the livery. He felt people watching him, staring even more intensely than usual. A few smiled at him, and to his surprise, a saloon girl passed him glaring as though looking right through him. It appeared that by marrying he’d become acceptable to some and off-limits to others.

“Morning!” Angus Mosely, the livery owner, shouted to Carter as though he spoke to him every day. “How’s the little wife?” he asked in a voice people could hear all the way to the saloon.

Carter nodded once and stopped while still several feet upwind of Mosely. He had no idea how he should answer such a greeting, or why the man suddenly seemed concerned about his wife. He’d had to deal with the livery owner a few times over the years, but Mosely was usually too drunk to say much.

Though only a few years older than Carter, Mosely moved like a man twice his age. Old age had settled into his bones early. He had a lazy eye, or more accurately he had one good eye in a body otherwise consumed with little or no activity. The one alert eye took in everything around him while it dragged the rest of his dirty face and smelly body along behind.

Mosely’s only friend in town seemed to be Wheeler, Sheriff Riley’s deputy, who could match both Mosely’s work habits most days and his drinking habits most nights. Willard had often told Carter stories of finding the pair passed out in front of his store at dawn.

“She must be fine and dandy.” Mosely tried again to make conversation, interrupting Carter’s thoughts. “I’ll bet she sent you into town after her things or you wouldn’t be here pestering me.” He laughed in short little sounds that lifted one side of his mouth only briefly. “Better face it, mister, from now on you can stop thinking and just wait for orders. Your carefree days are over.”

Carter didn’t answer as he followed Mosely into the barn. Willard told Carter once that the whole town couldn’t decide if Mosely smelled like the barn, or if the barn smelled of Mosely. Either way most men breathed shallow once they stepped inside the livery.

Mosely’s rambling about carefree days made no sense. Carter hadn’t had a day free of worry in his life. Why should having a wife make it any different?

Mosely talked on, greeting the horses in the same tone he greeted most people. He needed no return fire of conversation from Carter or the animals.

He finally led Carter to Bailee’s wagon behind the stables. If the schooner were in any worse shape, Carter would have suggested using it as firewood. The hand brake had fallen completely off and lay in the mud. There were holes in even the patches of the canvas, and one of the corral horses had gnawed a crescent shape into the wood of the bench seat.

Carter looked inside. Several boxes, layered in mud and dirt, were lodged against one end. A small bed was wedged into the other. Empty boxes and barrels that must have once held supplies cluttered the middle of the wagon. Everything was soaked from days of rain.

“You owe me three dollars for storage and feed for the animals.” Mosely scratched his beard. “I’d take a pair of the oxen in trade, but I’ve no use for the wagon.”

Carter shook his head and handed the man a gold coin.

Mosely shadowed him as Carter walked around the wagon. “For another four bits I’d drive it out to your place.”