Redeeming Love (15 page)

It wasn’t the first time a man had said he loved her. “I’m flattered,” she said dryly. When he didn’t say anything more, she clenched the blanket in her fist. “By the way. My name isn’t Mara. It’s
Angel
. You ought to get the name right if you’re going to put the ring on my finger.”

“You said I could call you anything I wanted.”

Men had called her by other names than Angel. Some nice. Some not so nice. But she didn’t want this man calling her anything but Angel. That’s who he had married. Angel. And Angel was all he was going to get.

“The name Mara comes from the Bible,” he said. “It’s in the Book of Ruth.”

“And being a Bible-reading man, you figure Angel is too good a name for me.”

“Good’s got nothing to do with it. Angel isn’t your real name.”

“Angel
is
who I am.”

His face hardened. “Angel was a prostitute in Pair-a-Dice, and she doesn’t exist anymore.”

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“Nothing’s any different now from what it’s always been, whatever you choose to call me.”

Michael sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s a whole lot different,” he said.

“You’re my wife now.”

She was shaking with weakness, but she fought back. “Do you really think that makes a difference? How? You paid for me, just like you always did.”

“Paying the Duchess seemed the quickest way to get rid of her. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.” Her head throbbed.

“You’d better lie down again.”

She didn’t have the strength to protest when he put his arm around her and removed the support from her back. She felt his hand, rough with calluses and warm against her bare skin as he eased her back. “Don’t push it,”

he said and pulled the blanket up again.

She tried to get a good look at his face and couldn’t. “I hope you don’t mind waiting. I’m not up to showing any gratitude right now.”

She heard the smile in his response. “I’m a patient man.”

His fingertips ran lightly across her damp forehead. “I shouldn’t have let you sit up so long. You’re not up to more than a few minutes at a time.” She wanted to argue but knew it was useless. He was bound to know she was in great pain. “What hurts most?”

“Nothing I want you touching.” She closed her eyes, wishing she could die so the pain would end. When he touched her temples, she drew in her breath.

“Relax.” His caress was neither exploring nor intimate, and she eased. “By the way,” he said, “my name is Michael. Michael Hosea. In case you didn’t remember.”

“I didn’t,” she lied.

“Michael. Not too hard to remember.”

“If you want to.”

He laughed softly. She knew she had gotten to him that last night at the brothel. Why had he taken her away from Pair-a-Dice with him? When he had walked out the door, she never expected to see him again. So why had 106

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he come back? What use was she to him like this?

“You’re tensing up again. Relax the muscles in your forehead,” he said.

“Come on, Mara. Think about that if you have to think about anything.”

“Why did you come back?”

“God sent me.”

He was crazy. That was it. He was just plain crazy.

“Try to stop thinking so much. There’s a mocking bird outside the window. Listen to it.”

His hands were so gentle. She did what he told her, and the pain lessened. He talked to her softly, and she grew sleepy. She had heard all kinds of men’s voices before, but none like his. Deep, calm, soothing.

She was so tired, she wanted to die and sleep forever. She could barely keep her eyes open. “You and God better not expect much,” she mumbled.

“I want everything.”

“Your litany.” He could hope all he wanted, and he could ask, too. But all he was going to get was what was left. Nothing. Nothing at all.

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Eight

A mocker seeks wisdom

and never finds it.

P R O V E R B S

1 4 : 6

Angel didn’t care one way or the other whether she ever got up again. A still darkness lay heavily on her. She had seen a way to end her miserable life and had reached for it in a moment of desperation—and she’d failed again.

Rather than find the peace she craved, she found pain. Rather than be free, she was in bondage to another man.

Why couldn’t she do anything right? Why did all her plans go awry?

Hosea was the one man she had wanted most to avoid, and now he owned her. She had no strength to fight him. Worse, she had to rely on him for food, water, shelter—everything. Her utter dependency on him chafed bitterly. She was raw with it. And she hated him even more because of it.

Had Hosea been an ordinary man, she would have known how to fight him, but he wasn’t. Nothing she said bothered him. He was a mountain of granite. She could not wound him. His quiet determination unnerved her.

There was a look about him now that she couldn’t describe. He once said he had learned a lot about her during her fever, but he didn’t say what. She worried about what “everything” he wanted. Whenever she was awake, he was there. She just wanted him to leave her alone.

Angel felt a trap closing in on her. She wasn’t in a fancy brownstone this time. She wasn’t in a rotting tent made out of a ship’s sail, or a two-story 109

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brothel, but it was a trap nonetheless, and this lunatic held the key.

What did he want from her? And why did she sense he was more dangerous than all the other men she had ever known?

After a week, Michael left her in the cabin by herself for a few hours at a time while he went out to work. She didn’t know what he did, and she didn’t ask. She didn’t care. She was relieved he wasn’t hovering over her, wiping her brow or spooning soup into her mouth. She wanted to be by herself. She wanted to
think,
and she couldn’t do it with him hanging around.

The aloneness she had craved turned to loneliness, and think was all she did. It rained, and she listened to the pounding on the roof…and with the pounding came visions of the shack on the docks, and Mama and Rab.

Thinking of Rab led to Duke, and Duke led to all the rest, and she thought she would go mad. Maybe she would start talking to God, too, like this crazy man who had put his mother’s wedding ring on her finger.

Why had he done it? Why had he
married
her?

Then, there he would be in the doorway, big, strong, quiet, and looking at her with that way of his. She wanted to ignore him, but he filled the cabin with his presence. Even when he just sat silent before the fire reading the same old worn book, he took over the whole place. He was taking her over with it. Even when she shut her eyes, she saw him there. He was sitting in a chair before the fire, right inside her head.

She didn’t understand him any more now than she had at the brothel, but he had changed somehow. He was different. For one thing, he didn’t talk a lot. In fact, he talked very little. He would smile at her and ask how she was feeling or if she needed anything and then go about his own business, whatever his business was. Day after day she watched him put his hat on and knew he was going to leave her alone again.

“Mister,” she said, determined never to call him by his name, “why did you bring me back here if all you’re going to do is leave me alone in this cabin?”

“I’m giving you time to think.”

“Think about what?”

“Whatever you need to think about. You’ll get up when you’re ready.” He 110

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took his hat from the hook by the door and left.

The morning sunlight streamed in through an open window. A fire burned in the grate. Her stomach was full, and she was warm. She should be satisfied. She should be able to relax and just lean back and not think about anything. Solitude should be enough.

What was the matter with her?

Maybe it was the silence. She was used to sounds attacking her from all sides. Men knocking on the doors, men telling her what they wanted, men telling her what to do, men shouting, men singing, men swearing in the bar below. Sometimes chairs crashed against walls and glasses shattered, and there was always the Duchess telling her how grateful she should be. Or Magowan telling some man his time was up and if he didn’t get his pants on and get out, he’d regret it.

But she had never had this silence, this quiet that rang in her ears.

She complained.

“There’s plenty of sound,” Hosea said. “Just listen for it.”

With nothing else to occupy her, she did. And he was right. The silence changed, and she heard sounds breaking through. It was like the rain used to be when she put out the shiny tins in the dark little shack. She began to pick out voices in the chorus around her. A cricket lived under the bed; a bullfrog was just outside the window. A throng of feathered companions came and went outside—robins, sparrows, and a noisy jay.

Finally, Angel stood on her own feet.

When she looked for something to put on, she found nothing. It hadn’t occurred to her until then that nothing in the cabin belonged to her. None of her own things were here. Where were they? Hadn’t he thought to bring them along? What was she supposed to wear? A scratchy gunnysack?

He had precious little himself from the looks of it. A small chest of drawers yielded an extra pair of worn long johns, a pair of dungarees, and some heavy socks—all far too large for her. An old, battered black trunk was in the corner, but she was too tired to open and rummage through it. Naked and too weak to drag a blanket off the bed to put around herself, she just leaned on the windowsill and drank in the fresh, cold air.

Half a dozen tiny birds flitted from branch to branch in a big tree. A larger 111

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bird strutted and pecked at the ground no more than six feet from the cabin.

He was so cocky, she smiled. A soft breeze drifted in, and with it a scent so rich, she could almost taste it. The meadowland near Mama’s cottage used to smell just like this. She closed her eyes and savored it.

She opened her eyes again and gazed at the stretch of land. “Oh, Mama,”

she whispered, her throat tightening. Weakness crept up her spine, and her ribs began to ache again. She was shaking and growing light-headed.

Michael walked in and, when he saw her standing naked by the open window, went without a word to take a quilt from the bed. He swung it around her, and she buckled beneath the weight of it. He scooped her up gently.

“How long have you been up?”

“Not long enough to be put back in bed.” He held her in his arms like a child, his warmth soaking into her. He smelled of earth and sun. “You can put me down now. But not in bed. I’ve spent my whole life in bed and I’m sick of it.”

Michael smiled. She wasn’t going to do anything by halves, even getting on her feet again. He put her in the chair before the fire and added another log.

Pain was shooting along her sides. She clenched the arms of the chair, feeling every spot where Magowan had laid boot and fist. He hadn’t missed much. She touched her face gingerly and frowned. “Do you have a mirror?”

Michael took the shiny tin he used for shaving and handed it to her.

Aghast, she stared. After a long moment, she held the tin up to him, and he set it back on the shelf.

“How much did you pay for me?”

“Everything I had.”

She laughed weakly. “Mister, you’re a fool.” How could he even look at her like this?

“There’s no permanent damage.”

“No? Well, at least I have all my teeth. That’s something.”

“I didn’t marry you for your looks.”

“Of course you didn’t. You married me for my charming nature. Or did
God
tell you to do it?”

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“Maybe he figured the horns in your head fit the holes in mine.”

Angel rested her head back. “I knew you were crazy the first time I laid eyes on you.” She was weary past endurance and thought how much more comfortable she would be lying on her back on that straw mattress again.

She might make it to her feet, but one step, and she was going to break her nose again, right on the plank floor.

Michael came to her and lifted her gently, ignoring her protests.

“Mister, I told you I don’t want to lie down yet.”

“Fine. Sit up in bed.”

“What happened to all my things?”

“I forgot them. Besides, what you had wouldn’t suit you now anyway. A farmer’s wife doesn’t wear satin and lace.”

“No, I suppose she trots naked up and down your rows of beans and carrots.”

He grinned, humor lighting his eyes. “Might be kind of interesting.”

Angel could see why Rebecca had been so enamored of him, but good looks made no difference to her. Duke had been a handsome man. A charis-matic charmer. “Look,” she said tightly, “I want to start getting up and about on my own.
With
something on.”