The Marriage Bed (29 page)

Bess had been doubtful. He could read it in the honest woman's face, but thankfully Remy had pushed her along and finally they were all out of sight.

He'd taken up a position that blocked the sun on her face, though if the truth were known he had a real weakness for those little freckles that popped out when she forgot her bonnet for any length of time. And there he sat, guarding her as best he could, watching her chest rise and fall in the late afternoon sun and wondering when being so close to her without touching her was going to kill him.

"Liv?" He ran his hand down her arm so lightly that she twitched in her sleep but didn't awaken.

Like some kind of twisted and demented man bent on torturing himself, he tried the same thing over her left breast. It seemed to have no effect on her, but he could hardly draw a breath.

"Liv." He said it louder this time, needing to talk to her, to see those eyes, to hear that voice.

"Spencer?" She blinked, raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and looked around. Panic gripped her. "Where is everyone?'' she asked, coming to a sitting position and scooting away from him as if he were a threat to her very safety. She'd probably rather be closer to the kettle of simmering stew than to him. It hurt him like hell in the pit of his stomach.

"They went for a walk," he said gently. "They'll be back soon."

"How soon?"

"How long can someone carry Josie?" He smiled at her reassuringly.

She didn't appear reassured. "Oh."

"I can't go on like this," he admitted, playing with the sand because he just couldn't bear to look at her and not touch her.

She rose to her knees and said, "I'll go find them and tell them it's time to go."

"No. Please."

She stayed where she was, just the way she was, waiting for him to say what he had to say, to get it over with and let her be.

"Do you know what you're doing to me?" he asked her, her breasts level with his eyes.

"What I'm doing to you?" she asked.

What was that, compared to what he had done to her?

"I'll go find them," she said while he watched her breasts fall and rise, fall and rise.

"Don't go." He reached out and caught one of her hands. "Please. You gave me three years, Livvy-love. I've no right to ask for more, but let me have five more minutes to convince you I'm sorry."

He sank against her, burying his head against her belly, and she allowed it. More, she cradled it there with her hand.

"I know you're sorry," she said, lifting his head so that his gaze locked with hers. "It doesn't matter. Sorry doesn't erase the pain. It doesn't give me back the love you stole, the loyalty you tricked me into giving you, the affection you withheld. You made a fool of me, Spencer, and every time I look at you I see that fool reflected in your eyes."

"No one knows what I did, Liv. And if they did they would blame me, not you. You were innocent and I kept you that way. No one would . . ."

"I would. I do. I was never a wife to you, Spencer. And now you want something I don't even know how to give."

"I want whatever you'll give me Liv. Any morsel of affection. Any seed. I'll plant it and it will grow into a love that—"

She smiled at him, almost laughing. "Isn't it funny," she said, "that you are asking for a seed from me? What was it you withheld from me? When you raised my nightgown and my hopes, what were you planting?"

"I was a fool, an idiot. I was so full of pain I couldn't see that you were my way out." He looked out at the bay and saw the children playing by the canal lighthouse in the distance.

Their voices carried on the wind, laughing, shouting, singing a song he couldn't quite make out. What did it matter? What did anything matter if he couldn't bring her to her senses and make her understand that he was sorry? "Through it all, even when I loved another woman, through my whole life, you've always been there—my lighthouse. The one I could talk to, turn to. No matter how far Out to sea I ever went, no matter how lost I became, you were always my lighthouse. Can you tell me now, when I have finally found my way home, that you don't love me anymore?"

He pulled her down so that she lay next to him on the ground. Gently he pulled the pins from her hair and spread it across the grass.

"You love me, Livvy, and I love you." He laid his hand gently just above her breasts. "Look at how hard it is for you to breathe with me near." He grabbed up her hand and put in on his own chest. "See? For me, too. You feel my heart?"

She nodded, and her lips parted ever so slightly. He knew it wasn't an invitation, knew she didn't want him to kiss her, knew it was a temptation she was sworn to resist. But he bent and tempted her anyway, just barely brushing her soft lips with his own. He took her in his arms and waited for her to give in to what he knew from the way her heart pounded she had to be feeling. What he was willing her to feel.

But she lay limp in his arms, refusing to respond.

Backing up just a little, he tried to read her eyes, but she averted them, even after he tilted her chin up so that she nearly had to close them to avoid seeing his face. So she wouldn't meet his gaze. Sight was only one of the senses, and he knew better than most what the other ones could do. How the smell of lilacs could twist a man's insides. How the sound of a sigh could wring his heart.

He touched her as gently as he could, wishing his fingers were half as smooth as the ear whose outline he was tracing. He fingered the pad at the base of her ear, amazed at its softness. Her neck was long and graceful, and he let his fingers follow each other toward the base of her throat.

"Have you lost your locket?"

She shook her head silently.

She was as foolish as he had once been, if she thought that taking his picture away from her heart would erase the place he held there. Still, it hurt to the quick to know how hard she was trying.

As hard as he had tried. But he didn't have the patience she had. And he'd be damned if he'd waste three more years of their lives.

"All right, Liv. I won't ask you to love me. I'll learn to live without it if I have to. But you have to let me love you. That I can't do without."

He grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted it to his face, burying himself in it. With his free hand he pulled her closer against him, fitting her to him, molding her against his hardness. She didn't fight him, yet she offered no encouragement. Not even when he ran his hands down her back and Cupped her buttocks so that she couldn't help but feel his maleness pressing into her belly, burning them both with his desire.

"Let me love you, Livvy. Let me . . ."

"It wouldn't be enough," Livvy said quietly. "I've tried that. Believe me, Spencer, it wouldn't be enough for either of us."

"Tell me what I have to do, Liv," he pleaded with her. "I'll do anything you want if you'll just come back."

"There's nothing you can do," she said, pulling away from him and sitting up to search the shoreline for her children. He watched her straighten her clothing, knowing all the thoughts that ran through her pretty head, for hadn't he had them all himself? Hadn't he tried to keep himself from loving her for three long years? "This isn't the time or the place. For heaven's sake, Spencer. Emma Zephin was buried this morning and here you are trying to kiss me. And the children not a hundred yards away."

"And what excuse," he asked her as a cool breeze wafted over them, "will you find for yourself tomorrow?"

Chapter Twenty-one

It was happening again, and after such a good day, too. Neil tried to bury himself more deeply into the covers, but the night was warm and unless he was willing to suffocate, there was no getting away from the voices that crept under the kitchen door and crawled to his bed on the sofa, strangling his heart.

"You would have thought," his Aunt Olivia was telling his Aunt Bess, "from the way I just lay there, that my heart and my brain had just up and left my body. Like they had no memory of what he'd done and how much it hurt."

He couldn't believe that his uncle would ever take his hand to his aunt, not the way his father had done all those times to his mother. Maybe the man who had been sitting in the house that first night when they had all arrived might have, the man who'd been so angry that he'd frightened Neil. But that man had faded, softened, become his teacher and his friend, A man who could lay his hand on Neil's shoulder and set the world right.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to help you," his Aunt Bess said. Even her sigh reached his ears. "You've never even told me this terrible thing he did. Frankly, Olivia, it seems to me that Spencer has finally fallen in love with you and you're too blind to see it."

Well, that was telling her, and about time, too. Maybe now they could all go home. He pushed the covers further down and let the breeze coming in through the screen door wash over him.

"Things have a way of looking different in someone else's kitchen, Bess. Like your problem with Remy. If a man loved me the way that Remy loves you . . ."

"He does, Livvy. You just don't want to see it all of a sudden. How long are you going to keep this up?"

God bless Aunt Bess. There wasn't a word that Neil could have said better. If she couldn't get his Aunt Liv to see reason, he didn't know what hope there was.

"I'm not going back, Bess. Not ever. I've written to Julian and told him about Sacotte Farm and hinted for some help with the children. I know you'll be moving and I've got to find a place for us to go."

She'd written his father! Neil bit his lip to keep from crying out. His hands balled into fists and he kicked the covers off his legs and then lay rigid in the dark, praying his Aunt Bess could talk sense into Aunt Liv.

"There's no
us
, Olivia. The children will go back to their father and you will move to town and live with Remy and me for the rest of your life. Does that sound like what you want to do? Turn away from a man that loves you and a ready-made family that needs you because a man made a mistake? Every man makes mistakes. It's the nature of the beast. If they were perfect, Olivia, they'd be women!"

Please, Aunt Olivia,
he prayed.
Please.

"Three years of mistakes," his aunt said. "Maybe I could take my share of the money and . . ."

"Your share?" Aunt Bess asked softly.

In the silence Neil began to shiver.

"I hadn't thought about that," Aunt Bess said. "I suppose that only a third of that money will belong to us."

"I—I wouldn't take it at all, you know I wouldn't, if things were different, but I have the children to worry about and when the farm goes there won't even be a roof over our heads."

"Listen to me, Olivia," Uncle Remy said. Until then Neil hadn't even known his uncle was in the kitchen, too. "The way I see it, you've got two choices. You can go back to Spencer, who, Lord knows, seems to have come to his senses just as you took leave of yours, or you can move with us to town and send the kids back to Bouche."

"Or I can—"

"No, Liv, you can't. Not unless in addition to having gone crazy you've suddenly developed a selfish streak, too."

"I'm only thinking about the children," Aunt Liv said, and he could hear the tears in her voice.

"They aren't your children, and I can't spare your share to feed and house Bouche's brood. I never said they could come,
you
did. And I'm not gonna say they can stay. It's not like their father is dead or anything, and I need your share to buy Zephin's, now that he's willing to sell."

"But my share is mine," she said so softly that Neil had to strain to hear her. "Papa left it in thirds if it went out of the family."

"And what are Bess and I supposed to do while you have a perfectly good farm a stone's throw from here that you're too proud or too stubborn to live in? You got options and we got none and that's the truth of it."

The door from the kitchen flew open and Aunt Liv came racing through it, her hand pressed to her mouth as she ran across the room and pushed the screen door so hard it banged against the chair on the porch. He heard one heart-wrenching sob as she went running away from the house into the darkenness.

"How could you have said that to her?" Aunt Bess shouted at Uncle Remy. The light from the kitchen flooded the parlor and Neil squinted while his eyes adjusted. His aunt and uncle Sat at the table across from one another like two fighters locked in the same ring. He waited for his uncle to rise and lift his hand, a scene that was embedded on the back of his eyelids forever, like so many others that concerned his mother, but instead his uncle reached out and took his aunt's hand tenderly.

"She loves those kids more than anything, Bess. There's no chance she's gonna send them away. If she believes it's the only choice she's got, she'll have to go back to Spencer, where she belongs."

"You better be right, Remy Sacotte. Losing those children would kill your sister, I swear it." She pulled her hand away from his uncle's. "I don't know what he's done, but she can't seem to forgive that husband of hers. She's between the bay and the lake, and either way she thinks she's drowning."

"And you think I just threw her a rock to hold on to. That what you're saying?"

"She loves him. I can see that. It's plain as that pretty nose on her face."

"Sounded like she was panting for him this afternoon, didn't it?"

Neil pulled the pillow over his head. Between hearing about his aunt and uncle's personal business and suffocating, he'd take death. Besides, he had a lot to think about. Like how he was going to get his aunt and uncle back together before it was too late. Once his father got that letter, the smell of money would have him scheming before he opened the seal.

She leaned against the barn and tried to catch her breath. Of course they would need her money. And now, before Charlie started looking for a better offer. It was as if it were meant to be, Mr. Makeridge wanting to buy Sacotte Farm for the railroad, Charlie wanting to sell the mercantile since he didn't need a dowry for Emma anymore.

Poor Emma! What would she think of what Olivia was doing? Naturally it was easy to condemn her if the facts weren't known. And Lord knew, Livvy didn't want the facts known. Not by anyone who was alive, anyway.

"The man pretended to make love to me," she whispered. "How can I trust him now? How can I believe a word he says when he never told me I wasn't the one at fault?"

"Did you hear something?" a girl's voice said. Livvy thought it came from inside the barn.

"No." The voice was muffled, ragged. "Come back down."

"Henry, I really think . . ." and then a giggle.

"Don't think," her nephew said. "Just feel."

"Oh, Henry!"

Olivia stood rooted to the spot where she leaned against the thin wooden siding that separated her from the young couple. She could hear the rustling of hay, the booted foot that scraped the floor, the sighs and moans of heavy loving. Did Sacotte Farm have to have the only barn in Door County that wasn't built of brick? Was it spared from the fire all those years ago just so that she could hear the sounds of what she would always miss?

She supposed she should stop them. They were too young and many mistakes were made in barns that had to be lived with for the rest of their lives.

"I love you, Jenny," Henry said so loudly it was as if he wanted the world to know.

"Shh!"

There were groans, and the smacking sounds of lips against flesh. Livvy leaned her head back and closed her eyes, imagining herself in Spencer's arms and wishing that her body didn't turn to jelly at the thought. And she wondered if maybe, right now, Spencer was thinking about her and whether his thoughts were running in the same direction.

"Do you really love me?" Jenny asked, her voice raspy and her words interrupted by a deep breath.

"Mm." Boots along the floor, a thud.

"When you move to town you won't have to help out in the orchards any more. You'll be able to get a full-time job, won't you?"

There was a smothered answer that sounded like a yes.

"I heard that Philip is already working at Zephin's."

Another noise that must have been agreement.

"So then you'll be free to work, too, right?"

His foot crashed against the very slats behind Olivia, bouncing her head slightly as it did. Sometimes when Spencer moved in their bed the headboard reverberated just the same way.

"Mm."

"And we'll get married?"

The movement behind Livvy's back stopped. The labored breathing slowed. Her eyes opened to the darkness around her and she hugged herself despite the warm summer air.

"If you'll have me."

There were thuds and scrapes and rustlings, with Jenny demanding to know what Henry was doing. Then a gasp.

"Lord, Henry! Is that for me?"

"I've been carrying it around since that Makeridge fellow settled on Sacotte Farm, It's real gold, too."

The door to the house swung open loudly on squeaky hinges. "Henry? You out there?" Remy yelled.

Poor Neil. It was a wonder how that boy seemed to sleep through all the noise around him. He deserved better than to be sleeping on someone's parlor sofa.

"Henry!"

Olivia came out from behind the barn just as Remy was halfway there. She intercepted him and they stood stiffly looking at each other, one-third of the farm profits standing between them.

"You seen Henry?" Remy finally asked.

"No," Olivia said.

"You been in the barn?"

Livvy nodded. Let the lovers have their moment, she thought. There were so few that could be captured and saved forever, like one sweet kiss behind the very same barn so many years ago. One moment might have to last them a very long time.

"Humph," Remy said, shrugging. "Don't know where that boy gets to. You ready to go in?"

"I think I'll just sit out on the porch awhile," she said, walking back to the house with her brother at her side.

"It'll all work out," her brother said, and she nodded, not believing him, not wanting to hurt him, not wanting to challenge the truth in his words.

He went in and she sat on the porch swing, rocking it very gently and wishing she was still that little girl whose mother would let her fall asleep out on the swing and then cover her with a thin blanket and let the fairies watch over her until morning.

Oh, how she loved this farm. Every inch of ground, every blade of grass, every leaf on every tree. She loved the peeling yellow paint, the dust-coated windows, the rotting second step up to the porch. The house held memories of a loving family in which she was the baby, always shielded from the worries that might have plagued her parents, always coddled against the frustrations her siblings must have known.

She leaned her head on her arm and tucked her legs up beside her, her dress covering her bare feet, and tried to remember just one day—any day—from start to finish, just one in which she was young and happy.

She heard the noise but left her eyes closed. She hadn't been asleep long, she didn't think, and Henry must have been finally sneaking in. But the rustling continued, and then a clanking of sorts until Livvy reluctantly opened her eyes to see what it was that Henry was up to.

A huge ladder leaned against the barn in the semidarkness, and Livvy's first thought was of an elopement. It was a ridiculous thought, but what with Henry and Jenny getting engaged, and the goings-on in the barn, and then this ladder, and Henry halfway up . . .

What in the world? First off, the man on the ladder was bigger than Henry. Second, the ladder was resting on the solid side of the barn, leading to nowhere. In the dark cover of night it appeared that the man on the ladder was holding a bucket. And a brush. And was smoking a pipe. And whistling.

There was only one man in Maple Stand, probably in all of Wisconsin, who could smoke a pipe and whistle.

She sat up, careful not to set the glider on its squeaky ride, and trod on bare feet down the porch steps. Quietly, aware that her white dress was the most visible thing for miles, she stole her way to within several feet of the ladder.

Above her, in uneven letters that dripped down the side of the wooden barn, was her name. Well, not
Olivia
. Livvy-love, it said. Followed by a fancy dash and then P-l-e.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice coming out deafeningly loud in the still night air and startling Spencer nearly off the ladder, so that she had to grab it and steady it with all her weight pressed against the one leg that wanted to throw her husband at her feet.

"Uh, hi.'' It was too dark to see him blush, but she didn't have to see his face to know he was embarrassed to be caught red handed. Or red-brushed, to be more particular.

"I asked you," she repeated, hands on hips, fingertips thrumming, "what you think you're doing?"

He came slowly down the ladder, and the graceful man who had managed the paint bucket, brush, and pipe seemed to run out of hands on his way down. By the time he reached the ground he had lost his pipe, banged his head trying to reach for it, managed to paint the side of his own face, and left a good-size puddle of red paint not more than a few inches from Livvy's feet.

"Hi," he said again, wiping his hands on his pants.

"Don't 'hi' me," she said, wondering what she must look like to him, barefoot, her dress rumpled, her hair tumbling every which way. She reached up to try to gather it into a bun, searching for the pin that must have come loose in her sleep.