A Proper Marriage (6 page)

Charlotte rushed into the parlor and grabbed Olivia around the waist. “Guess what?”

“I can’t possibly guess, but I assume it’s something wonderful.”

“Better than wonderful. My best friend, Suzanne Hart, stood up in meeting today with Charles Beal and announced their betrothal. They’re to be married in three weeks’ time. Please come, Olivia. And Luke too.”

“That’s kind of you, but Luke hopes to be on the way to Laurel Grove before then.”

The girl released a long sigh. “Oh, that’s right. Pa was asking around at meeting today about a horse and wagon. I will miss our talks, Olivia.”

“I’ll miss you too. Perhaps you’ll come for a visit once we’re settled.”

“Promise?”

Delia hurried in. “Charlotte, please see to the fire in the cookstove and put the kettle on to boil. And get the good dishes from the cupboard.”

“I can do that,” Olivia said. “I’m not much use in the kitchen, but I do know how to set a table.”

“We all have to start somewhere,” Delia said. “I am happy to share my recipe for cornbread. I noticed it’s Luke’s favorite.”

An hour later they were seated in the dining room. After Samuel’s blessing, Delia passed bowls and platters around the table.

Olivia pushed the food around on her plate, listening to the men talk about the recently signed treaty that had ended the Mexican War and ceded vast territories in the south and the west to the United States.

“Now that the Texas question is settled, people will be moving there by the hundreds,” Ben said. “But I’d rather head farther west.” He buttered his third hunk of cornbread. “They say it’s some of the prettiest country in the world, and I’m itching to see it while it’s still wild and beautiful.”

Samuel nodded. “It won’t be wild for long. Settlers are sure to snap up the best pieces of ground for farming out there too.” He sipped his coffee. “And that, my friends, will mean nothing less than the spread of slavery.”

“Not if I can do anything about it,” Ben said. “What does thee say, Mr. Makenzie, about all this expansion?”

Luke chewed and swallowed. “Landholders will want cheap labor, all right.”

“Then they can pay free men a decent wage.” Ben’s dark eyes flashed. “Mark my words. There’ll be bloodshed over this before it’s all said and done.”

“Oh, Ben, let us pray not.” Delia rose and returned from the kitchen with an apple pie. “Let us speak of happier things.”

“Sweeping unpleasant topics under the rug won’t make them go away, Mother.” Charlotte set down her water glass and smiled at Ben. “I admire a man who isn’t afraid to look at things squarely, even when they are controversial.”

“Speaking of controversy, what about those women planning a convention up in New York?” Samuel asked, sinking his fork into his pie.

“What convention, Pa?” Charlotte refilled her glass. “I haven’t heard a thing about it.”

“It seems they want something like the Bill of Rights for women. Lucretia Mott is behind it, and that Stanton woman. ’Tis all foolishness.”

Olivia found the idea intriguing, thrilling even. “Foolishness, Mr. Mills? To want the same privileges and considerations that men enjoy?”

Luke frowned and nudged her ankle under the table. “What Olivia meant was—”

“You needn’t explain me, Luke.” Olivia smiled at him to soften the effect of her words. “I am capable of expressing my own thoughts.”

“Clearly,” Samuel said. “No offense taken, Mrs. Makenzie. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.”

“Well, I think it’s a good idea too,” Charlotte said. “And hooray for Mrs. Mott for having the courage to say what many of us feel.”

Ben stared at her. “Why, Lottie, I never knew that thee supported such an idea.”

“Thee never asked.”

Delia shook her head. “I’ve always thought it was such a shame that Mrs. Mott sided with the Hicksites. How anyone can deny the divinity of our Lord . . . well, it just escapes me, that’s all. More pie, Luke?”

“No, thank you. I’m full as a tick. Everything sure was good, though.”

“Olivia made the cornbread.” Delia smiled at Olivia across the table. “She will make a fine cook by and by.”

“Mr. Mills?” Ben stood and took Charlotte’s hand. “Do I have permission to walk with Charlotte down to the creek?”

Samuel’s laugh was warm. “Stay within sight of the house, Benjamin. It looks like we’re in for more rain. And see that she is home before supper.”

When they had gone, Olivia helped Delia with the dishes. Samuel filled his pipe with tobacco from a satinwood box. “I spoke with Noah Pierce at meeting today,” he told Luke. “He’s willing to provide a horse and wagon in exchange for twenty percent of your first peach crop.”

“Twenty percent?” Luke’s voice carried clearly into the kitchen. Olivia picked up a dishtowel and peered out the window. A fine rain had begun to fall. Charlotte and Ben ran for the house, laughing, dodging raindrops. Olivia dried a platter and returned to the table for the serving bowls.

Samuel lit his pipe and puffed to get it going. “It’s steep, granted,” he said to Luke.

“I’d planned on hiring a wagon and a decent horse to get me and Olivia out to Laurel Grove. I thought you’d agreed to lend me the money.”

“A horse and a wagon will be required to get the place started. Noah’s a fair man. And his livestock is the best around here.”

“But twenty percent—”

“I gave my word,” Samuel said, “and I will lend the sum we discussed, but I think Noah’s is the better plan.”

Olivia returned to the kitchen, one hand pressed to her midsection to quell her rising nausea. During Luke’s recovery, she’d been able to postpone thinking ahead to the day when she would leave the warm care of the Quakers and be on her own in a strange place. Now reality was crowding in, and her initial panic came roaring back. She was not cut out for the harsh life on a farm with a husband she barely knew. Surely if she wrote to George and explained everything, he would come for her.

“Olivia?” Delia finished the dishes, dried her hands, and removed her apron. “What’s the matter? Thee is pale as milk.”

“I—”

“Olivia?” Taking up his crutch, Luke hobbled to the door. “Are you all right?”

“Am I all right?” She looked at him, nearly wild with despair. “No. I am not. And I never expect to be all right again.”

She pushed past him and ran blindly for the door, faintly aware of the voices behind her.

“Samuel?” Luke’s voice. “Go after her, please. She’s—”

“Let her be.” That was Delia. “So much has happened, she’s just overwrought, the poor thing. A little bit of rain won’t do her any harm.”

“You don’t understand,” Luke said. “Olivia is with child.”

Chapter Seven

T
hrough the dust-streaked window of the cabin, Olivia watched Luke and Samuel Mills staking the tender tomato plants in the garden. The May morning had brought thick clouds, heavy with rain to the mountain peaks, promising a storm in the valley below. A good rain was always welcome in the valley, but a hard storm would decimate their crop.

Working in tandem, Luke and Samuel tethered the plants to thin stakes Luke had made in the Millses’ barn. Olivia sighed. Luke spent every spare minute out in the barn, going out just after supper and not coming back until bedtime. It made for a lonely life, but since she could offer him so little companionship, perhaps it was just as well. Apart from the crops and the weather and her health, they seemed to have little to say.

Across the creek, behind the main house, Delia and Charlotte gathered the laundry, which flapped and billowed on the line. Olivia blotted her face with a gray handkerchief that smelled of dust and sweat. She should have borrowed Delia’s washtub last week when it was offered, but she hadn’t the energy. Besides, it really didn’t matter. She and Luke never went anywhere. Who cared if their clothes were less than pristine?

Luke rarely complained. Not about his dusty clothes or the plain, unappetizing meals she set before him every day. Delia had given her several recipes, including the one for dried apple pie she had just taken out of the oven. Delia had even supplied the ingredients. It had seemed simple, but somehow Olivia had failed to master it.

The misshapen pie with its burned edges and pasty middle seemed another reminder of her failed life. Maybe things would have been better if they had gone on to Laurel Grove. But in the end, Luke had decided to stay. Taking the loan Mr. Mills offered was only slightly more acceptable than becoming in effect a sharecropper, beholden to Mr. Pierce for a percentage of their first harvest. Luke thought it best to remain here, helping Samuel with his orchard and gardens in exchange for the shelter of this leaky cabin, a small monthly wage, and a share of the earnings when the crops were sold. If this year’s crops were good and if they could save most of his earnings, perhaps next year they would go on to Laurel Grove. By then his leg would be mended and the baby would be here. And perhaps by then her future wouldn’t seem quite so bleak.

With a rueful glance at the ruined pie, Olivia took up her broom and made a halfhearted attempt to sweep the floor, though the wind would simply blow dust and grit right back inside this pitiful excuse for a home. It was hardly more than a shed, one room wide and two rooms deep. In the front room, a small pine table held a single oil lamp. A threadbare settee, a castoff from Noah Pierce’s wife, sat in front of the fireplace. Beneath the window sat a narrow bed with a corn-shuck mattress that dug into her skin every time she moved. A black cookstove, a table, and three mismatched chairs filled the second, smaller room overlooking the orchard and the creek.

After he’d made the decision to stay, Luke had built a chicken coop, and now the yard was overrun with nervous, jerky hens that fluttered and squawked and pecked in the dirt for june bugs.

The baby moved, and Olivia eased onto the settee and flapped the hem of her apron to cool her face. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, gritty from yet another sleepless night. It wasn’t only the prickly mattress that kept her awake into the wee hours. She worried constantly about the baby. She knew nothing about caring for children. How on earth could she be the kind of mother she wanted to be when she’d had so little mothering of her own? Certainly Mrs. Fondren with her stern eyes and sharp tongue had provided no example. Olivia worried she would turn out like her own mother, lacking the courage and daily self-sacrifice motherhood required.

The letter she’d written to George after this morning’s breakfast crackled inside her pocket. Maybe writing to him was wrong, maybe it was a betrayal of Luke after all he had done for her, but the prospect of another year in this hovel was unbearable. George might be careless, but deep down he must have felt something for her, something more than just a passing fancy. Besides, she was carrying his child. He deserved to know that, didn’t he?

She closed her eyes and thought of the last day they’d spent together in the mountain cabin above Blue Gap. He was late. She waited as the late-winter light waned, fidgeting with her hair, smoothing her skirts, rearranging the handful of early-blooming trillium she’d found beneath an outcropping. At last she saw him coming up the wooded trail, his head bent against the chill wind. She went out to meet him, running across the clearing, boots crunching on the fallen leaves littering the path. George stopped and opened his arms. She stepped into his embrace, trembling as his arms went around her, his breath warm on her hair.

“Olivia?” Delia’s voice cut through her reverie.

Olivia started and opened her eyes. Delia was at the door holding a large covered dish. “Did I disturb thee?”

“Oh, no. I was resting my eyes. Please come in.”

Delia crossed the room. “I was teaching Charlotte to make dumplings this morning and thought I might as well make enough to share. Now don’t go to the trouble of getting up. I’ll put this in the kitchen.” She smiled. “I remember how I disliked having to move about in the months before my own children came.”

“Thank you, Delia. I
am
tired today.”

Delia bustled back into the room and settled herself on the other end of the settee. “I noticed the pie on the windowsill.”

Olivia nodded. “I tried following your recipe, but I’m afraid the result is less than appetizing.”

“It just takes practice.” Delia reached across and patted Olivia’s hand. “Next time will be better.”

“Maybe, but in the meantime poor Luke has to live with the outcome. Not that he complains.”

“He’s a good husband. My Samuel says Luke is forever talking about his plans for the baby and for the future.”

“Well, it can’t come soon enough to suit me.”

Delia frowned, and Olivia realized her mistake. “Not that we are ungrateful for everything you and Samuel have done. What I meant to say is that—”

“No offense taken, child. Every woman likes to be mistress of a sturdy house, and I will admit this one leaves much to be desired. Yet Samuel and I were quite happy here when we were newly wed.” She smiled. “At the beginning of a marriage, nothing matters except one another.”

Olivia pulled at a loose thread in the hem of her apron. This union was not real. Not to her, not to Luke, certainly not to God. With nothing but guilt and obligation to build upon, how could they ever hope to have a proper marriage?

“I am not here just to bring dumplings,” Delia said. “I came to deliver an invitation.”

“Oh?” Olivia felt a spark of hope. Perhaps there was to be a dance, a parade, a visiting troupe of acrobats. Anything to break the monotony and steer her thoughts away from her unhappiness.

“Come with us to meeting on Sunday.”

“To—”

“It’s time.”

“You’re very kind, but you know we are not Quakers.”

The Millses, the Pierces, the Thornburgs—everyone she had met in the months since fate brought her here—were kind and hardworking. But the Quaker women, the Friends, as some in the valley called them, dressed as if wearing any color save drab green or gray was a cardinal sin. Their use of
thee
and
thy
made her feel strange and awkward. As if she’d somehow been transported back to Shakespeare’s day. She’d heard that the Quakers worshiped with neither music nor sermonizing to break the silence.