A Lantern in the Window (8 page)

It didn’t seem fair at all. It was as
if the fates were playing a joke on her, sending her here to be
Noah’s second wife.

If Annie had set her mind to imagining
her own exact opposite, she supposed that Molly would have been
that image. And guess who any man in his right mind would choose,
given a choice? she thought bitterly.

No wonder Noah loved Molly still, with
no room left over in his heart for Annie.

By mid-June, summer had come to the
prairies.

One afternoon Annie looked at Bets and
saw that she was blooming like one of the wild roses she’d just
picked and put in a jar on the table. The good food and clean air
had done exactly what Annie had prayed they would. The cough that
had plagued Bets for more than two years was gone, and her
painfully thin body was showing the first timid signs of a bosom
and hips.

It was a busy time on the farm. Calves
were being born, Noah was finishing the last of the spring
planting, the early lettuce and radishes Annie had planted in the
garden at the back of the house were up, and the kitchen door stood
open to catch the fragrant evening breeze.

Annie drew in deep draughts of the
warm, fresh air and prayed that she wouldn’t throw up
again.

"What is wrong with you?” Bets’s hands
flew, her brow furrowed with worry over her big sister. "Everyday,
sick, sick, all the time. Maybe you go to see doctor, yes? I worry
over you,” she added plaintively, wrapping her arms around Annie.
"I love you,” she added, pulling away enough so Annie could see the
sign.

“
I love you too.” Annie
returned the hug, fighting against the nausea that made her stomach
churn. She was in the midst of making supper, and she'd had to run
to the shed twice in the past hour.

It was a time of new beginnings, and
for the past week, Annie had been fairly certain she was
pregnant.

It had taken her a while to figure out
what was wrong with her. What had confused her was that Elinora had
written that the natural order of such things was to be sick in the
morning and miss her monthly.

Instead, Annie had been fine every
morning and miserably sick in the afternoons. Her monthly came for
a day and went away, came for another and went away, in fits and
starts.

She was going to have to tell Noah.
Her hands knotted into fists. How would he react when he found
out?

The thought of telling him weighed
heavily on her. Not that she feared his temper, although she knew
he had one. She’d seen him furiously angry at times, when a
renegade wolf killed one of the best milk cows, and when the
Medicine Hat Times reported some new insanity the politicians had
decreed law.

She’d also witnessed the gentleness in
him, with a sick newborn calf, and always with her sister. From the
very first, he’d made a real effort to learn Bets’s sign language.
And with his father, Noah was unfailingly thoughtful and
kind.

Annie knew also the depths of his
passion and the intensity of his loving; not once had he taken her
without thought of her pleasure. Indeed, he’d taught her to want
him, to need as terribly as he that physical joining.

But he’d been most deliberate about
preventing babies. Without ever saying a word, he made it clear
each time they loved that he absolutely didn’t want a child with
her.

Well, he was about to have one anyway,
Annie thought rebelliously, slamming down the oven door and
reaching inside, forgetting that the towel she used as a potholder
was threadbare.

“
Owww! Lordie, owww!” She
howled with pain and dropped the pot, spilling the entire stew all
over the oven door and the floor. Noah would be in for his supper
in a few moments, and now the meal was ruined.

Spill the stew, ruin the bread, get
herself with child; couldn’t she do anything right?
Annie threw
herself into a chair, put her head down on her arms, and burst into
a storm of tears.

Bets patted her back and then quietly
cleaned up the mess, wisely letting Annie cry for a while. Then the
young girl made a vinegar poultice for Annie’s burned fingers,
brewed a pot of tea, poured two cups, and indicated that Annie
should take one to Zachary.

"You go talk with Mr. Ferguson. I will
make us eggs and bacon for dinner,” she promised.

"There’s no bread,” Annie said
miserably. “Today’s batch was so bad I took it out and buried it
behind the bam.”

"I will make biscuits,” Bets assured
her. “Go, go.” She pointed towards Zachary's room.

Well, the biscuits her little sister
made would be lighter than hers, that was certain, Annie concluded
dolefully as she blew her nose and made her way in to sit beside
Zachary.

Zachary looked at her and gave her his
crooked smile, and Annie did her best to return it. How strange it
was that the old man who'd scared her half to death at first had
become someone she liked to be with. She and Bets and Zachary had
spent delightful moments together in the past months.

In short spurts, using his garbled
speech and a lot of sign language, he’d laboriously told the
sisters tales of his early life in eastern Canada, of how after his
beloved Mary died, he and Noah, a young man by that time, had
emigrated to the western plains and found this place on the South
Saskatchewan River, building the cabin that eventually became this
house and slowly building up their herd of cattle. He told of
renegade Indians and drunken white men who’d threatened the
Fergusons’ very existence here, and of how he and Noah together had
fought them off and won.

Listening, Annie had gained a greater
understanding of Noah, of his quiet strength, his courage, the
steely determination that made him the man he was.

The man she'd fallen in love with, she
thought despairingly as she handed Zachary his tea and lowered
herself wearily into the rocking chair Bets had moved beside his
bed.

Lordie, why couldn’t she have settled
for just
liking
the man she'd married? Why in heaven did she
have to
love
him to distraction?

Annie tilted her head back and closed
her eyes. There were times when she could pretend that Noah loved
her back, those rare moments when he smiled at her with affection,
or walked with her along the river bank in the evening when they
talked together of the day’s happenings. And there were the nights,
especially the nights, when he made such passionate love to her.
But each time, afterwards, the distancing came again, the drawing
away.

A sound from Zachary made her open her
eyes. He was watching her, and the part of his face not affected by
the paralysis was smiling, his dark eyes, so like Noah’s, gentle
and questioning.

“
Tired?” His hand moved in
question. He gestured at the burns on her palms. "Sore?"

“
I spilled the damn stew
all over the floor and burned my hands in the bargain.” She tried
for a smile, but the tears welled up again and rolled down her
cheeks, and despair overwhelmed her.

“
Oh, Zachary,” she wailed.
“Why can’t I do anything right?” The words tumbled out of their own
accord. “The bread I make is like rock, my piecrust isn't fit to
eat, I burned that confounded roast last week to a cinder and—and
now—" The words welled up in her and she couldn’t stop them. "Oh,
Zachary, I'm—I’m going to have a—a baby, and Noah—he
doesn't—doesn’t want babies.” Tears dripped off her chin and wet
the front of her dress.

Zachary groped under his pillow and
handed her the clean handkerchief that Bets put there each
morning.

“
You want me to talk to
Noah?" he asked.

Alarmed, Annie shook her head, mopped
at her eyes, and tried to stop sobbing. She blew her nose hard and
gulped. “No, thank you. I—I absolutely must tell him
myself.”

“
He’s a good man,” Zachary
signed with a sigh. "He loved his little son with all his
heart."

"I know that. And I know he loved
Molly that way too, and that he still misses her, and—and Jeremy,
too.”

Zachary nodded, his own sorrow for his
lost grandson plain on his face.

“
But that’s over, Zachary.
They’re dead and gone, and nothing can bring them back.” Her voice
became passionate, and all the feelings she’d stifled for so long
came pouring out in a torrent of words. “I want him to be happy
about
my
baby, I want him to love
this
baby and not
always just brood over what he’s lost,” Annie went on, her voice
filled with anger, not even caring that she was almost shouting.
“So what if what Gladys said was right and his blessed Molly was
perfect and I’m— I’m not? This baby”—her hands cupped her still-
flat abdomen—"this baby deserves a father just as much as Jeremy
ever did. It’s not my fault that Molly and Jeremy died, this new
baby shouldn’t have to pay just because—”

"That’s quite enough.”

Annie jumped and almost fell off her
chair as Noah’s voice thundered from directly behind her. She
whirled to face him, feeling the blood drain out of her
extremities, wondering how in heaven he’d managed to come in
without her hearing him.

And Lord, how long had he been
listening? He was in his stockinged feet; he must have taken off
his muddy boots outside, and of course she’d forgotten the kitchen
door was wide open.

Speechless now, she stared at him in
horror, knowing that the guilt she felt was plainly written on her
face. “Noah, I didn’t mean—”

“
Come with me.” He reached
down with both hands and grasped her arms, his fingers like iron
bands digging into her flesh, almost lifting her off her
feet.

In a moment they were in their own
bedroom, and Noah had slammed the door shut so hard that it seemed
the whole house shook.

Annie’s knees were trembling, along
with the rest of her. She whirled to face him when he released her
arm.

Her breath caught at the fury on his
face. His strong features were cold and hard, his jaw clenched with
rage. His narrowed eyes weren’t cold, however; they were like black
pools of fire. He glared at her, and she felt as if his gaze had
the power to sear her. His hands were planted low on his hips, and
she could see that his huge fists were clenched tight enough to
turn the knuckles white.

“
Noah,” she began in a
shaky voice. "I'm sorry, I never meant for you to hear—”

“
To hear what?” he
interrupted, his voice choked with fury. "To hear how you talk when
my back’s turned? To find out you’re having a baby"—the word came
out as a sneer—"and that I’m the last to know, after you’ve told my
father and your sister and that Elinora woman you write to, and
probably Gladys Hopkins, who’ll delight in informing the whole of
Medicine Hat?”

"Oh, phooey, I did not tell Bets or
Gladys,” she denied hotly, refusing to let him see that he
frightened her. She plopped down on the bed before her legs gave
out. “I didn’t mean to tell your father, but I burned myself and
ruined dinner and somehow it just came out. I
said
I was
sorry.” She swallowed back the nausea that rose in her
throat.

"You will
never"—
his words were
measured and he spoke very low, almost in a whisper
—
“never
again speak of Molly or of Jeremy.
Never, do you hear? They are not your business. They have nothing
whatsoever to do with you. You didn’t know them, and I will not
have you tarnishing their memory.”

Her mouth fell open and she gaped at
him.
“Me?
Tarnish the memory of your first wife and child?
How can you say such a thing?" The unfairness of the accusation
overwhelmed her.

“
And as for the unfortunate
child you carry,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “I wish to
God it were otherwise. I wish it had never happened, but the blame
is mine as much as your own, and I will do my duty by him, just as
I have with you."

Unfortunate child? Duty?

In an instant, all Annie’s remorse
turned to outrage.

"Your—your duty?” she sputtered.
“You—you pompous hypocrite, you. Is
duty
what you call what
goes on in this bed, then?” She thumped the bedcovers with both her
doubled-up fists and sprang to her feet so he couldn’t look down on
her.

"It was more than duty that started
this baby, Noah, whatever you choose to believe." She spat the
words at him and met his eyes fearlessly now, her chin held high.
"You cling to the past as if your dead wife and child hold all the
love and happiness life will ever offer you, and I'm sorry for you,
because you can’t see what’s right under your nose. When I lie with
you, I feel much more than duty.”

She struggled to keep her voice from
trembling and failed. "God help me, I feel love for you, Noah
Ferguson.”

Annie could see some of Noah’s
righteous anger giving way to shocked disbelief.

"And as for the child,” she went on,
“the only thing unfortunate about our baby is that his father
doesn’t want him. Well, I'll make up for that, never fear, because
already I love him with my whole heart and soul.” She’d made it
through without crying, and she was proud of that. But the turmoil
in her stomach made the victory short-lived. She gagged suddenly,
pressed a hand over her mouth, and ran as fast as she could for the
outhouse.