The Marriage Bed (17 page)

After some time and a few more cordials, Charlie pulled the team to a stop near the side of the road. "Been watching for bushes for quite some time and I'm afraid that those trees are gonna have to do before I burst. If you women need a little privacy . . ." He jumped down from the wagon and hurried off to the copse of trees without finishing his thought.

"I would like to stretch a bit," Olivia said, looking over the side of the carriage. "My, but we're up high, aren't we?"

"Just wait for me to help you," Mr. Makeridge said, leaping from the wagon and rushing around in time to catch her as she tried to get down from the wagon herself.

"Oh," she said as her ankle turned beneath her and she tumbled to the ground despite Mr. Makeridge's attempts to keep her on her feet.

He kneeled down next to her and looked at her closely. "Are you quite all right?'' he asked, his brows eased down and forming a big V across his forehead.

He looked so silly, she thought as she swayed slightly and found herself being righted by his hand on her arm. "I think I hurt my ankle," she admitted. "Do we have anymore chocolates?"

"I think you've had enough," Bess said, peering down from the coach at Olivia as if she heartily disapproved of Olivia sitting on the ground with the civil engineer from the Ahnapee and Western Railroad. Well, what did Bess know? Hadn't Dr. Roberts told her she needed to become a woman? And accused her of being afraid?

"Ha! And I thought you were apeep," she said. The word didn't sound right, and her voice sounded like it was dancing around in her head, making her wish she could get up and dance to the tune of this new woman in her body.

"Mr. Makeridge," Bess said in what sounded to Olivia to be a very accusatory voice, "might those chocolate candies have some liquor in them?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Olivia said, trying to get to her feet but finding her ankle would not cooperate. "They are delicious. You should try some. In fact, I'd like another. Waylon?"

"Whatever you'd like," he said, and rose to bring her down the box. "I don't think your friend approves," he said in a stage whisper.

"Bess isn't my friend. She's my sister-in-law. She can't have any fun." She thought for a minute. "Unless that thing in her purse is a . . . what do they call those? Something French. A French . . . What is it, Bess?"

"Olivia Williamson! I'd swear you were drunk," Bess said.

In the distance they could hear Charlie Zephin singing. As he came closer the words became clear. ". . . She pulled down her drawers to a lot of guffaws, and proved she wasn't a she cat at all." He doffed his hat and looked down at Olivia, still sprawled on the ground with Mr. Makeridge standing beside her. "Evening, Miss Olivia. Enjoying the view?"

"You been eating those chocolates, too?" Bess asked. "They got liquor in them, Charlie Zephin?"

Charlie gave a broad wink at Waylon Makeridge and then shook his head. "I don't believe so, Mrs. Sacotte, A fine lady such as Mrs. Williamson would never partake of liquor, now would she?"

"Certainly not," Livvy agreed. "Wasn't the moon over your left shoulder before, Mr. Makeridge?"

Waylon smiled at her and asked if she needed help to the bushes.

"No, I'll just shit here," she said, leaning against the carriage wheel.

"Olivia!"

"What?" she said at Bess's sharp tone. "What did I say? I just want to sit here for a minute. Then I'll get back in the wagon, if Mr. Makeridge can help me up."

"Of course," he said solicitously. "And just call me Waylon, please. You just lean on me, Olivia. That's it."

The man had a lot of hands. One brushed a breast, one was against her bottom. One was supporting her around her waist, and one was slipping behind both knees and lifting her into the carriage. He leaned her like a rag doll against the corner of the seat and then lifted her foot onto his lap.

"We'd better get this boot off before your foot swells," he said, and struggled to undo her pearl gray vici kid button shoe. "There now," he said as he slid her foot out and checked her ankle and calf.

"Mm," she said, righting herself and returning her foot to the floorboards. "That feels much better."

"Anybody up there want another cherry cordial?" Waylon asked, holding the box out to Bess and Charlie, who each took a piece. He poised the box in front of Livvy. "Olivia?",

"I think I've had enough," she said, but her hand plucked another from the box and shoved it in her mouth despite her words.

"So tell me," Mr. Makeridge said quietly, "about growing up on Sacotte Farm."

Spencer heard the trio singing off key from all the way down by the main road. The children had all been asleep for hours, with thankfully fewer mishaps than the previous day, though he had suffered a bite.from Josie when he'd removed her from halfway up the steps to the loft, and Neil had managed to spill not one but both buckets of milk that morning by tripping over them, which meant not only the loss of the milk but wet messy trousers that would reek by the time Olivia got back. Louisa had been quiet and leery all day, and he'd curbed his tongue in her honor.

One of those voices was Olivia's, as surely as if she were singing at church, but the song was one he'd never heard her, or any other lady, sing. He opened the door and peered out in time to see the carriage come weaving up his path with Charlie Zephin in the front and what looked to be two passengers in the rear seat. He came out onto the porch and watched in utter amazement as Livvy stood and then fell back down onto her seat.

"Whoops," she said, and then broke into giggles.

"Whoops," Charlie repeated, and guffawed so loudly Spencer was sure he would wake the children. Maybe even the dead.

"This is where I get off," Livvy said, and stood again. This time when she lost her balance she fell smack into some man's lap. Spencer covered the distance to the wagon in two strides and yanked her up and out of the carriage in one quick motion.

"Olivia?" he said, trying to make heads or tails out of her behavior. "Do you want to explain . . ." Before he could finish, the man in the backseat handed him a gray boot.

"Oh!" she said, reaching for the boot and holding on to Spencer to keep from falling over. "That's where it went. Ground's cold," she said, raising her skirt.

"You're drunk," he said, realizing what in the world was wrong with his demure wife. "You're falling-down-lying-in-the-gutter-step-over-me-while-I-puke drunk!" He took a step away from her and she wobbled, smiling sweetly at him.

"That's ridipolous," she said, covering her mouth and looking ashamed. "I am a temperate woman. I am a pillar of the church. A beacon of righteousness. I am hot." She began unbuttoning her jacket.

"Olivia," he said as calmly as he could manage. "Get into the house. And keep quiet. The children are asleep."

"Oh," she crooned. "My little ones. Were they good to their Uncle Spencer?"

"Go inside," he repeated as she worked at getting herself out of her jacket.

"Are you coming? Doctor says we can make all the babies we want. You want to make a baby?"

"You know," the man in the carriage said, "I must have been wrong about those chocolates. I'm beginning to feel a bit of a buzz myself."

"Who the hell are you?" Spencer demanded, standing beside the wagon and pulling on the front of the man's suit until he was kneeling in the carriage face to face with him. "I want to know what to put on your headstone."

"Williamson's jealous?" Charlie said with surprise. "I'd a never believed it."

"I asked your name," Spencer repeated, aware from the shadows that were being cast on the curtain that Livvy was now in their bedroom. All three men watched as she peeled the jacket from her body and started on the buttons of her blouse. Sure. When it was just him, she was always hiding behind that damn screen. Now, with an audience, she was doing a regular bump and grind.

The curtains parted and Livvy raised the window. In a loud whisper she bade good-bye to Charlie and Waylon.

"Waylon?" Spencer asked. "You that railroad man?"

"Shit. I'd better get him home to Emma before he can see straight." Charlie laughed and flicked the reins. The railroad man fell over on the floor of the wagon as Charlie turned the horses around and left Spencer standing stunned in their wake.

She was humming when he entered the bedroom, rolling a fine white-tipped lisle stocking down her leg like a two-bit tart. Her hair had escaped her bun and was tumbling over her shoulders and down her back. Her blouse lay on the floor, along with her skirt. Both looked like she had aimed for the back of the chair and missed.

"Oh, Spencer," she said, her color high and her smile seductive. "Look. It doesn't even need me." She Was pointing to her corset, which stood on the floor in a circle by itself, supporting nothing but air.

"Mm," he said, not knowing how he was supposed to respond.

"And I don't need it," she said proudly, standing and dirusting her breasts out before falling back on the bed. She stretched and Spencer was sure he had never seen anything so provocative in his life. "Did you miss me?"

"Get under the covers, Olivia. It's very late."
And I have very little self-control. Roll over again and I'm done for.

She flipped onto her stomach, the slit in her underthings revealing a soft round bottom cheek. He groaned. "Isn't it hot in here, Spence?" she asked him, her words even more slurred than before.

"Yes, Olivia. It's damn hot in here," he agreed, searching for a sheet to throw over her nearly naked body.

"Damn hot," she agreed, and he turned around to stare at the mouth that had uttered his favorite profanity.

It was half open, and out of it came a very faint sigh.

"For my next birthday, Spence," she said dreamily. "If we don't get any more children, can I have some of those chocolates?''

"Chocolates?" he asked, and then remembered the comment that railroad slick had made in the carriage. "Is that how you got like this, Liv? Eating cordials?"

"Do you think I'm pretty, Spence?" she asked.

Her dark hair was everywhere, surrounding her face and crawling across her naked shoulders. She lay now on her side, and her breasts were pushed together and escaping out the top of her camisole, one dusky nipple almost totally exposed. Her hip flared out from a wasplike waist, making him wonder why she had even donned the corset that now stood on the floor, and her voice was soft and slurred and a little husky.

"Do you?" she asked again with lips that looked swollen with passion and want. "Do you think I'm a woman and want to make a miracle with me?"

"I think you're drunk," he said, laying the sheet over her and tucking it under her chin.

"I can't bear it that you don't want me," she said, followed first by a hiccup and then by a sob.

Want her
, he thought,
want her
. He wanted her more than he could remember ever wanting anything, wanted to do things to her that he'd only read about, and not in Dr. Napheys's book, either. He wanted to kiss every inch of her, touch her everywhere and make her pant for more, for him. He wanted to plunge his tongue in the sweetness of her mouth and taste the chocolate that had left her lying on the bed waiting for him to ravish her.

"What kind of man would I be if I took advantage of a drunken wife?" he asked her gently, smoothing the hair from her face and torturing himself just a little more.

"A weak one?" she asked, sniffing and rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

"Try to go to sleep, Livvy. You're gonna have one helluva headache come morning." He turned down the lamp.

"You don't love me, do you?" she asked.

"Sex has nothing to do with love, Olivia," he answered evasively. "Go to sleep."

"I bet Waylon wouldn't turn down an opportunity like this." Her eyes were shut tight, but tears fell from them, anyway.

"He'd have to be an idiot or a gentleman," Spencer agreed. He doubted the man was either.

"You're just lucky I love you," she said in that voice that signaled she'd be asleep any moment.

He had no answer for her, so he just lay down next to her in his clothes, every inch stiff as a rod, and waited for her to fall asleep.

Chapter Twelve

Spencer was well aware that the first hangover was always the worst. With sympathy he vaguely remembered his own through the haze that softens the pains of growing up. No doubt Livvy had probably seen him in the throes of it. He'd never paid attention to when she was and wasn't underfoot, never noticed when she was around.

But before her feet even hit the floor he knew how poorly she was feeling by the groan she let escape her lips and the way she was clutching the bedsheets as if she were afraid of falling overboard and drowning in her own misery on the bedroom floor.

"It'll get better after you're up awhile," he said to her back.

She began to nod, than caught herself and stopped.

"You okay?" he asked as she eased herself up from the bed, keeping her body as stiff as possible, as if any sudden movement might be her last.

"Yes," she said, no doubt through gritted teeth. Clomping unevenly across the floor, one boot still on her foot from the previous night, she managed to gather her clothing and take it behind the screen without letting him see her face.

"Well, you sure were full as a tick last night," he said, trying appear more understanding than he felt. "You sure were in bed with your boots on . . . that is, your boot."

She didn't answer him.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, Liv." At least he hoped there wasn't.

Still she said nothing and moved about so quietly he wasn't even sure she was dressing.

"You have a good time in the city?"

When she still didn't answer, he rose and began getting out of his dirty underwear and into fresh clothes for the day.

"Hey," he yelled at the screen. "I didn't get you drunk, you know. There's no call to be mad at me."

He shoved his legs into his summer balbriggans and pulled his blue jeans on over them.

"If anybody ought to be mad, it's me. I find you lying all over some man in the back of Charlie Zephin's wagon, drunk as a skunk and smelling as bad, your dress is full of mud, You've got one shoe off . . . I think I was pretty tolerant there."

He grabbed the same white shirt he had worn the day before and thrust one arm and then the other through the sleeves. He thought that steaming about his wife's behavior all night long had gotten it out of his system, but apparently it hadn't. Not that he was jealous, dammit, he was sure of that. If he was, that would mean he loved Olivia, another thing he was sure he'd avoided. But even if he didn't love her, and he didn't, she was his wife, and that alone was reason enough for the anger he felt still welling within him.

"I should have taken you over my knee and whipped you good."

He buttoned the shirt. The tails came out wrong and he ripped open the buttons and started again.

"In fact, I should have demanded an explanation before I let you pass out like that. And I probably should have beaten you senseless over that fop in the wagon."

He got the shirttails right and sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his socks and boots.

". . . After I broke the guy's pretty nose."

She was taking forever back there. He could have gotten dressed three times and plowed two fields in the time it was taking her to get into her shirtwaist.

"Come out of there now, or I'm coming after you," he shouted. "We got kids to ready for church and a cow that hasn't been milked proper in two days."

Nothing.

"Fine," he said. "Remember, you asked for this." He pushed the screen so hard it fell over like a house of cards, crumbling from the weight of the clothing hanging over its top. Behind it, sitting on a chair and fighting with the lace to her boot, was his wife, her vision so blurred by her tears he wasn't sure she could even tell where her boot ended and her leg began.

It was hard to hold on to his anger in the face of so pathetic a scene. He grabbed at her ankle and undid the lace for her, eased the shoe off her foot, and thrust it at her.

"Another man would've beat his wife within an inch of her life," he said, standing there looking at the miserable woman holding her boot as if she had no idea what to do with it. "You know that?"

She nodded. With her face streaked with silent tears she looked up at him. "Why didn't you?" she asked as if what he'd done hadn't been kind, hadn't been decent and adult and understanding. As if it hadn't taken all the strength he had left not to assert the rights that the law gave him and his own heart had given away.

"Do you know how lucky you are that I didn't? That I feel the way I do? That I've never laid a hand on you?"

Two dark eyes, glistening with tears, stared up at him. She sure didn't seem to realize her good fortune in having married a man with so mild a temper. A man who didn't have a possessive bone in his body where she was concerned. A man who, as he stood there staring at the soft swell of his wife's bosom, was quickly losing that mild temper.

"Jeez," he said, fed up with trying to understand women. "Next time I just might give you what-for."

She looked up at him with doubt in her eyes, doubt and disappointment.

"Try it again, Livvy, and see if I don't."

His hands itched to touch her. But he wasn't at all certain that it would be in anger.

He wasn't even jealous. She'd made a perfect fool of herself—not that she'd planned to, but it had turned out that way—and he wasn't even jealous. She'd come home lying in another man's arms, for heaven's sake. What more did she have to do?

What more
could
she do, but give in and give up?

Her head hurt so much in church that she wished she could just die and get it over with. Her ankle felt like it was caught in the oven door every time she stepped down onto it as she hobbled down the aisle to their pew with the children and it got worse as she made her way back home.

But nothing hurt as much as her heart, which was surely broken so completely it could never be mended.

Of course, he hadn't bothered to turn the soil in her garden, which was just fine with her. She hardly felt like getting down on her hands and knees and planting strawberries for his pies. She had been foolish enough to believe that those pies could make him love her, just as she believed each supper she made, each shirt she washed and ironed, each kindness she performed would somehow build, like little flakes of snow until the weight of them together would break through the roof he had built over his heart and smother his pain.

She was an idiot.

An idiot with a pounding head and a throbbing foot. And bread to be baked and beds to be stripped and linens to be washed, along with children to be fed and cared for.

Thank goodness for the children. Josie stuck to her like a shadow, clearly relieved she had returned. By the time Louisa and Neil were due home from Bess and Remy's, she and Josie had fed the chickens, milked Miss Lily, made two loaves of quick bread, fixed a dinner for Spencer that he had taken back with him to the fields, and gotten the linens done.

All of that and she had come to terms with her life, too.

She had three children who filled her days with joy and exhausted her enough to see her through her nights. Why, Emma Zephin would trade places with her in a heartbeat.

But Olivia, fool that she was, had wanted three children, a beautiful home, a husband who provided well for her, and love on top of all that. And she'd thought that she could earn it, or steal it, or trick it out of Spencer. Well, she'd cast beyond the moon and come out not too badly. Maybe she didn't have love, but she had josie and Neil and Louisa, and that would have to be enough.

Just as she was hanging up the last of the sheets, with little Josie holding up the pins for her, the older children came walking up the path. Neil was waving his arms and talking a mile a minute. Louisa was taking giant strides, but she kept her eyes on the dirt before her and her expression was grim.

"Didn't you sleep well?" Livvy asked her when she got close enough to see the dark smudges under her eyes. "You look awfully tired."

"I slept," the girl said, hurrying past her and on into the house.

Livvy went to follow but felt a hand, warm even through her cotton sleeve, staying her. "Let them all go on in," Spencer said in a whisper. His soft voice twisted her insides. He was sweaty from the fields and smelled of wet soil and hard work. Despite her resolutions she still inhaled deeply as if she could capture a piece of him that way.

"Something you wanted, Spencer?" Her voice was formal, foreign, as if they were two acquaintances who were exchanging pleasantries on the street.

"Still mad about me not going to church?" he asked as if the old hurts could do as much damage as the new ones.

"I've got work to do," she said, trying to shrug her arm from his grasp.

"Wait. It's about Louisa," he said, his hand still on her as though nothing between them had changed. But then, for him, nothing had. He hadn't loved her yesterday and he still didn't love her today. Only now she knew it, knew it for a fact. Believed it.

"I think it's her that's got the book," he said, finally letting go of Livvy's arm. Grimacing, he shook his head and pointed to her arm. "I got you dirty."

"Louisa's got the book?" The girl had to be a lot braver than Livvy, who'd never have had the nerve actually to take it.

"I think so," he said, still frowning at her arm. "Will that come out in the wash?" He rubbed his hands on his pants and then brushed at her sleeve.

She wished he'd forget about her dress. His nearness confused her. It was hard to concentrate on their conversation with him fingering her sleeve. "Did you ask her?"

"I didn't think she'd admit it, and I sure didn't want to embarrass her. That little one shames easier than . . ." He stopped abruptly as Louisa came out of the house in the calico dress Livvy had made for her to do her chores in.

"I'm going for a walk," she said.

Spencer gave Livvy a wink, sending spirals of warmth up her spine to do battle with the chills running down her back, then said, "Oh, yeah, Liv. Remy said he wanted that book back. Remind me to get it out of my drawer after dinner and bring it over to him."

The stiffening of Louisa's back told them what they wanted to know, but Spencer said nothing to the girl. Instead he apologized to Livvy again about her dress and made small talk until Louisa was well down the path.

"I think I'll just follow our little miss a ways," he said. "I sure would like to know where it is she keeps going."

Just the mention of Dr. Napheys's book led Livvy's dioughts down a path she couldn't control. A path that put her once again in Spencer's strong arms, beneath his warm body, at the mercy of his desires and of her own. "You think she's reading that book?" she asked. She could feel the heat in her cheeks.

"Well, you know," he said with a smirk before leaving her, "women have been known to take a peek between those covers."

Livvy hands flew to her cheeks hoping to cover them before he could see her furious blush.

He was laughing quietly as he walked away, his shoulders shaking as he set out after Louisa. Olivia squinted her eyes against the bright sun and wished she'd never sarnpled those cherries. Mr. Makeridge might just as well have offered her an apple, for the fruit had surely brought the ruination of what she'd hoped would be Eden.

Inside the house, Neil was enjoying a tall glass of milk and teasing Josie by holding a cookie out of her reach. The little girl was trying to climb his leg.

"No wonder she's always trying to get higher and higher," Livvy said, and scooped the little girl up so that she could grab the cookie from her brother. Frustration was surely something Olivia understood and not something she was likely to put up with.

Neil had stopped at the door to slip on his work boots, the ones that reminded her so much of Spencer's, when she remembered that there was something she wanted to ask him.

"I'm writing a letter to your papa today," she said. Neil seemed to flinch and his shoulders went up defensively. ''Is there anything you want me to tell him for you?''

"Why are you writing to him?"

"Well," she answered, "he's your papa, for one thing. I'm sure he wants to know how you and your sisters are getting on. It must be hard for him, all alone out in San Francisco, and when he gets a letter about you three it must make him feel closer to home." And she wanted to assure him that the children were fine where they were and that he needn't give a moment's thought to sending for them. Ever. He could go off to the Klondike, or wherever it was he was wishing to go, and she'd watch over his children and love them like her own. Forever.

"You don't have to tell him about, me, Aunt Liv. He doesn't miss me. That's for sure." He was squatting, tying up his boots, his face more intent on the job than was necessary.

"Of course he misses you," she said, afraid that it was no doubt true. "A father belongs with his children. It can't be easy for him, leaving you in someone else's care. I bet he worries about whether you're eating proper, and getting enough rest and working too hard."

"What are you going to tell him?" He ripped the laces open and started again, his fingers tangled in the long black strings.

She knelt beside him and took over tying his shoe as if he were still a small boy. The throbbing in her head was getting better as the day wore on. If only the same could be said for her heart.

"I'm going to tell him about the railroad," she said, trying to reassure him that there was nothing for him to worry about, though she wasn't sure what it was that had him, as well as his laces, tied in knots. "That man I met in Milwaukee, Mr. Makeridge? Well, he thinks that Maple Stand surely is a good place for a train stop on the way up from Sturgeon Bay. How would you like to wake up to the sound of a train whistle?"

"You aren't gonna tell him to come get us, are you? Josie's being much better, don't you think? She hardly ever bites anymore. And anyone can see that Uncle Spence needs me. He can't do that whole job alone. He needs a boy to unharness Curly George and rub him down and . . ."

She finished tying the laces despite the tears that blurred her vision. The boy was happy here, on the farm, with her and Spencer. The one letter she had received from Julian made no mention of the children joining him any time soon. In fact, it had been a request for money, claiming that Spencer was getting Neil's services for free and so he ought to be able to lend Julian a few dollars for a short time.