Cinderfella (17 page)

“It's pouring . . . ”

She hurried past him, brushed his arm and kept on going. Out into the rain and in a blur to the house.

 

It was a nightmare. The days passed, one into another, and every morning when Charmaine woke she was surprised to find herself sleeping in Ash Coleman's bed. He, of course, continued to sleep on the floor. At least, she assumed he slept.

He was either downstairs before the fire or staring out the bedroom window when she went to sleep, and no matter how early in the morning she woke, he was always gone.

She and Ash had been married for a full two weeks, and during most of that time they'd barely spoken. That rainy afternoon in the barn just four days ago had been the exception, an exception she didn't dare repeat. Inappropriate desires had come to the surface much too strongly and much too quickly. Now all she had to do was close her eyes or glimpse Ash when he didn't know she was looking, and those feelings came back, as strong and undeniable as the moments they'd touched.

Impossible. She had to get out of here!

It was Saturday, and that meant Verna and her boys would be going to town. Last week Charmaine had stayed at home, keeping to the quiet house while Ash was busy in the barn, but today — today she would ride along. She had a couple of telegrams to send.

She'd prefer to handle this another way, but Ash was making that impossible. This was her last resort.

She dressed in a warm burgundy day dress, since the days and nights were turning cooler, and placed a matching hat upon her head. Perhaps she'd see her father while she was in town. She hadn't seen him since the wedding, though her mother had dropped by twice to see how Charmaine was faring.

She wasn't faring well at all. Verna Coleman was spiteful and lazy, and those boys of hers had taken after her in both respects. It was Ash who kept this farm running, who did practically all the work while listening to the constant complaints. Nathan helped him out, here and there, and Oswald and Elmo would occasionally do a small chore, but Ash worked all the time.

Of course, he was probably keeping away from the house so he wouldn't have to see his bride any more than was necessary.

“Come along!” Verna snapped. “The wagon's hitched and ready to go.”

Verna was not as friendly these days as she had been on the day of the wedding. You'd think she was still holding a grudge over that little piece of pie.

“I'm coming.” Charmaine stepped onto the front porch of the Coleman house. It really was quite chilly. Elmo and Oswald were waiting, Elmo sitting in the driver's seat and Oswald waiting to assist his mother. He assisted Charmaine, too, into the back of the wagon since there was only room for three on the bench.

As she climbed into the wagon, she searched the barnyard for Ash. He was nowhere to be seen, but Nathan stepped from the house to watch them leave. For once, he wasn't smiling, and he didn't have anything to say — not even a pleasant farewell. He stood there on the porch with a frown on his face, and Charmaine could only watch from her bouncing seat as they took off down the road.

 

It was a nightmare. Instead of having foisted Oswald and the rest of the clan off on the Haleys, he had a new addition to his family. A reluctant wife.

The house was filled to bursting. Verna was as strident ever, and nothing would change the boys. Nathan had stayed much longer than Ash had expected he would, pitching in around the place and entertaining in the evening with stories of his life on the road. The only time Charmaine smiled was as Nathan told his tall tales around the evening fire.

For a few minutes he'd thought this marriage might work out after all, but the episode in the barn was like everything else with Charmaine. False and fleeting.

He came around the corner, and saw that the wagon he'd hitched up earlier was gone. For that, he could give thanks. A day without Verna and Elmo and Oswald was always a good day. He turned his eyes to the house. Charmaine would be there, puttering in the kitchen or trying to mend something. She wasn't very good at either. Maybe he should go in there and try to strike up a conversation. Maybe he should go in there and kiss her again and make damn sure she understood just what marriage was about. She wouldn't draw away from him again.

“She went with them.” Nathan's soft voice disturbed the daydream, and Ash near jumped out of his skin.

“Charmaine?” Ash turned to the little man who stood in the open wide doorway of the barn.

Nathan nodded.

He'd known she would leave sooner or later. She didn't belong here, she was as miserable as he was . . . so why did his heart drop to his knees? “She won't be back,” he said, as much to himself as to Nathan.

“You don't know that.”

But he did. Every day when he came in he expected to find his wife gone. Her father would relent and rescue her from marriage to a sodbuster, or her mother would arrive in her fine carriage to whisk her away, or Charmaine would saddle Pumpkin and ride away on her own. Somehow, some way, she would find her way out of this marriage she didn't want. A marriage he didn't want any more than she did.

“I truly believed,” Nathan said softly, “that once she was here . . . I mean, two people who are as obviously attracted as you two are can't share a bed and not find some sort of —”

Ash silenced his meddling godfather with a glare.

“Don't tell me you're not —” Nathan began.

“We don't want to have this discussion,” Ash said coldly.

“You can't mean —”

“Mind your own business.”

“Oh dear.” Nathan brought a small and slightly dirty hand to his breast. “Oh
dear
.”

Ash had no desire at the moment to discuss marital continence and the purity of marriage. Charmaine was gone, back to her nice big house, her solitary room, her overprotective father. He should be thanking his lucky stars.

But he wasn't.

“I don't understand women,” he confessed. “I was just fourteen when Mom died, and the only other woman who ever lived here was Verna.”

“Not exactly a shining example of womanhood,” Nathan said dryly.

“Why can't a woman be straightforward like a man? One minute Charmaine says exactly what she thinks, and the next minute she says something that makes no sense at all. Hell, half the time it's like I'm supposed to be able to read her mind.”

“A handy trick where females are involved,” Nathan agreed.

Ash climbed onto the fence that surrounded the pigsty and sat down to face his godfather. “Sometimes I look at Charmaine and think . . . my God, this woman is my
wife.
What more could a man ask for? But of course she doesn't want to be here, and she doesn't want to be my wife, and I'm a fool for even dreaming that this will ever work.”

“You love her,” Nathan said with a smug smile.

Ash lifted a stifling hand. “I wouldn't go quite that far. It's useless anyway. She's not going to stay here.”

Nathan sauntered toward the pigsty. “Go ahead, ask me,” he said with a superior air.

“Ask you what?”

“About women. What they like, what they expect, what drives them wild.”

“Nathan Sweet,” Ash said with a wide smile. “An expert on women.”

“Not an expert, by any means, but I have garnered a few rather astute observations over the years.” He slicked back his hair with one indolent hand. “Observations I would be happy to share.”

It was a long shot, but maybe the old man could help him understand what was going on with Charmaine. Maybe this turmoil wasn't all that unusual after all. “Tell me what you know, but. . . . ” He shook a finger in his godfather's direction. “If you try to give me a manual I'll strangle you with my bare hands, and that's a promise.”

 

Once the telegrams had been sent, Charmaine made her way to the house to see her mother. If her father was there she'd have a civil greeting for him, and nothing more. How could she ever forgive him for doing this to her? It was embarrassing, degrading . . . and everyone who smiled and waved as she passed knew exactly what had happened.

To her surprise, a smiling Ruth answered the door. To her even greater surprise, Ruth rushed off to the kitchen after admitting Charmaine. Apparently, she was entertaining Elmo there.

Her mother was sitting in the parlor and absently stitching on a sampler that had been in progress for a number of months. She'd brought it to Boston on the last visit, and had given it as much attention then as she did now. Very little. She seemed relieved to have an excuse to set it aside.

“Charmaine, is everything all right?”

It occurred to Charmaine to tell her mother all her troubles, to rail against her and take out all the anger and confusion that was bottled up inside. To search for answers to the puzzling questions and contradictions in her heart. But the normally robust Maureen Haley was pale, and her eyes were not as bright as usual. In fact, she looked a bit dazed.

“I just dropped by to say hello and visit for a while,” Charmaine said as she took a seat near her mother. “Everything's . . . fine.”

Fine. What an audacious lie.

But the warm smile she received at that answer made the lie worthwhile.

Ruth very quickly served tea and cookies, and then bustled from the room to return to Elmo and the kitchen.

The initial conversation that followed Ruth's exit was stilted and formal. They talked about the weather, and Charmaine only shivered once, when her mother mentioned that heavy rainstorm they'd had this week. She couldn't help but notice that often her mother seemed to be elsewhere — thinking of something entirely different from their harmless conversation.

“Are you all right?” Charmaine leaned forward, a half-empty teacup in her hands.

She expected a
fine
as false as her own, but her mother turned teary eyes her way. “I'm being so silly,” she whispered. “It happens to every woman of an age, and I knew it would happen to me, but I guess I wasn't really prepared.”

“Prepared for what?” Charmaine placed her teacup on the table and moved to sit beside her mother on the sofa. She placed her arm around a stiff shoulder, feeling very odd to be comforting her mother the way her mother had always comforted her.

“The change.” It was a low whisper. “The change of life that comes to every woman when she gets. . . . ” she sobbed.
“Old.”

“You're not old,” Charmaine said staunchly as she held her mother close. “You're . . . mature.”

It was, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Charmaine watched in horror as her staid, calm, sensible mother burst into tears.

“There now,” she said with a few soft pats to her mother's shaking back. “It's not as bad as all that. The change of life is perfectly normal. There are a number of excellent manuals available. I'm sure Howard would be happy to send you one.”

“Oh, don't mention Howard to me. Him and his darned manuals and seminars, he almost ruined you.” The tears stopped as the near-hysterical woman turned her full attention to Charmaine. “Why, if not for Ash. . . . ” she sniffled loudly. “If he hadn't come along and shown you the foolishness of your ideas . . . where would you be right now?”

In Boston, happily unwed.
“We're not talking about me, we're talking about you.”

“It's so silly.” Maureen straightened herself and wiped her face daintily, swiping away the tears. “I'm just afraid that your father won't look at me the same way he always has. I'm afraid he won't. . . . ” There was that far-off expression again. “Won't find me attractive anymore.”

“That
is
silly,” Charmaine agreed with a smile. “He's always adored you the way a husband should, in a wonderfully pure and spiritual way.”

“What? Oh yes, of course. Pure and spiritual.” And then she started to cry again.

 

 

 

 

 

Thirteen

 

Charmaine was so jostled she was certain she would be feeling the lurch of the wagon as she tried to sleep tonight. There was an advantage, however, to being relegated to the bed of the wagon. Verna and her sons seemed to have forgotten about her, and they hadn't tried for miles to draw her into the conversation.

She wouldn't be here for much longer, so she could take anything. Abuse, neglect, harsh words, utter boredom. As soon as Jeanette and Felicity received those telegrams they'd be on the next train to rescue her from this unbearable situation.

Poor Ash, she shouldn't blame him for any of this. It wasn't his fault they were married, and it certainly wasn't his fault that he was possessed of more magnetism than was normal. When he was clearheaded, he didn't want to be married any more than she did.

Maybe she could just appeal to his common sense, explain the situation, and see what his response was. He'd probably be happy to help her end this farce of a marriage. He had, after all, agreed to her insistence on a pure union. Of course he didn't like it much, and if she hadn't come to her senses in the barn this would be a pure union no longer.

Ash could help her, but asking him was a risk she couldn't take. What if he went to her father? It would be the perfect revenge, suitable punishment for the indignities he'd endured. Surely Ash knew that if Stuart Haley had any inkling his daughter was planning to return to Boston, he'd promptly put her under lock and key.

The wagon lurched as it came to a halt, but she was cushioned on all sides by the supplies Verna and Oswald had bought at the mercantile. She sat very still for a moment, as Verna and her boys left the wagon. Goodness, she felt like she was still moving.

With a hand on the sacks on either side, Charmaine rose slowly. Her knees wobbled, but just a little, and it didn't seem that the ground was spinning
too
terribly fast. Ash was just rising from the rocking chair on the front porch, the look on his face one of surprise and wonder.