The Marriage Bed (18 page)

Spencer had thrown the letter out, but Livvy had retrieved the envelope with its return address.

"No, I'm not gonna tell him to come get you." Not now, not ever. She hugged the boy and then straightened his hat. "Go on now. Uncle Spence needs a hand, like you said."

For a day that had started out so badly, it was amazing how much worse it could get. Her mind was unable to escape the thoughts that Neil had unwittingly placed there. Someday the letter from Julian asking for his children would arrive. Someday she would have to pack up their things, kiss them on their foreheads, and send them away, maybe on the very train that Waylon Makeridge was planning for. As lonely as the house had been before the children came, she knew how much worse it would be after they were gone.

Josie helped her with her afternoon chores. They weeded in the garden, the child pulling out as many seedlings as weeds, with Livvy following behind her and replanting the tiny stems as they went. They cleaned out the coop and then had to clean Josie, who, by the time they had finished, smelled worse than the coop. When Louisa finally came down the path with her hands behind her back, supper was cooking on the stove and Spencer was back in the fields.

So he'd been right about the book, Livvy supposed. Taking Josie by the hand, she hurriedly limped off toward the barn, leaving the house empty so that Louisa could return Dr. Napheys to his proper place.

Lord, the woman was glum. Her mood cast a pallor over the whole house. Funny how one woman could make a whole house frown. Well, it was quiet, anyway. That was something he had to be grateful for. Except for the uneven footsteps as his wife moved back and forth between the stove and the table, still favoring that ankle of hers, all Spencer heard was the clinking of silverware against plates.

"Guess I'll take that book over to Remy and Bess's after supper," he said, breaking the silence.

"Can I come?" Neil asked. "I've got three blood aggies and a ballot marble I wanna trade with Philip."

"For what?" Josie asked. No one else seemed at all interested.

"Well, the way we work it is, I give them to Philip and he kind of shops them around and gets my best deal."

"You mean you don't know what you're getting?" Louisa asked, obviously disapproving the plan.

"A Sacotte wouldn't cheat a Williamson," Neil said, defending his cousin. "He'll get me a good deal. You see if he doesn't."

"You're not a Williamson," Louisa said. "You are a Bouche."

Neil's gaze flew to Spencer, as if there were anything he could say that would change the way things were. "Well," he said, supposing it wouldn't do any harm. "For the time being, I guess you could think of yourselves as Williamsons. You're living in my house, eating my food . . . I guess for now,
just for now
, you could be considered Williamsons."

Before he'd spit it out, he was sorry he'd said it. The boy had that same damn look Livvy got so often. As if they thought everything was going to work out fine. Worse—as if they thought that he could make it all work out just fine.

"You want to come, Liv?"

She shook her head. Had she said a word all through dinner? Beyond "eat your pea soup" to Josie and "use your napkin" to Neil? She couldn't still be mad from the morning. She'd had no right to the anger even then. For heaven's sake, was she going to be mad forever?

"I want to take a look at that ankle before I go," he said. "I don't like the way you're limping on it."

"It's all right," she said, starting to rise.

"Sit down," he told her, figuring all the walking she was doing surely wasn't helping her leg heal. "You want something? One of the kids'll get it."

"I was just gonna clear the table," she said, still in her chair.

He directed the bigger children to see to the dishes and told Josie to get into her bedclothes. Then he stood, stretched, and put his hand out to help his wife from the chair. Putting weight on her foot suddenly after sitting through the meal was a bad idea, and she winced, her eyes widening with pain.

"Damn," he said, and whisked her off her feet, carrying her to the couch, then thinking better of it and continuing on to the bedroom. "You're pretty light for your size," he told her, surprised at how easily he was able to lift her, how well she seemed to fit in his arms. Oh, he'd helped her in and out of buggies and wagons, but he couldn't remember ever carrying her around. It felt surprisingly good.

He lowered her on to the bed and knelt to unlace her boot. Her leg was swollen above the top of her shoe and the leather had left an impression on her stocking.

"Lean back," he said, and reached up beneath her dress for the top of her stocking. She let him trace the cotton hose over her knee and peel it from her warm thigh with no resistance. Her skin was beyond soft as his fingers traced down her leg, cupping her calf, then easing the sock from her foot.

Angry marks crisscrossed her ankle like a work of art defiled.

"Does it hurt much?" he asked, touching it gently, wiggling her foot to make sure it wasn't, in fact, broken. It would be just like her, with her dedication to taking care of someone else's children, seeing to all her responsibilities, to limp around on a broken leg.

She jumped back at his touch, and he felt for her bones more gently. Even swollen, it was a delicate ankle. He'd never realized how small her feet were before. Surely he'd noticed that her boots were smaller than his, but her whole foot fit within his hand. And while that hand held her foot, the other began traveling higher and higher until it was examining her knee, and then above her knee, and then it was at the lacy edge of her drawers.

"You're right about not going to Remy's," he said, his hand kneading softly the muscles of her calf. "I think it's best if you stay off this leg tonight."

"But the children," she said, trying to sit up and move toward the edge of the bed.

"Louisa is quite capable of getting herself and Josie to bed," he said, standing and twisting her body around on the bed so that her head was on the pillow as it should be. "She did just fine while you were gone."

"She doesn't seem fine to me," Livvy grumbled, as if she were annoyed with him. As if he could be held accountable for the mood of the females in his household. "And I like to read to Josie at night." She pushed against his hand to sit up and it slipped from her shoulder to her breast.

Stunned, they both stared at his suntanned hand cupping the pale-yellow fabric covering her bosom as if it were a spider crawling down her dress. He had no thought to move it, no feeling that it was connected to him in any way that involved his ability to move. It didn't squeeze, or rub, or fondle her. It just held her, transmitting the beating of her heart to something deep inside him that warmed him in places he was sure were dead.

And then, still without his approval, without his instigation, the hand moved, slid up his wife's chest, and his fingers felt her pulse racing as they skimmed her long slim neck until they cradled it from behind and pulled her face toward his. A slight pressure with two fingers, and her head was tipped just enough for his lips to seek out hers and taste the sweetness of her kiss.

He lowered her head softly to the pillow, his hand still holding her head to his, his lips still working against hers, and climbed up onto the bed beside her. There were twelve buttons that ran down the front of her dress. He had counted them a hundred times when he had tried to keep his mind on other things than what lay beneath those twelve tiny buttons and a bit of white cotton. Now he opened the top one and laid a kiss against her neck.

The smell of hot lilacs rose from the hollow of her neck and he dipped his tongue, wondering if the taste would be as sweet.

"Aunt Liv?" It was Neil, his voice tentative as if he knew he might have interrupted something, but didn't seem to know what. Spencer wasn't so sure himself.

Spencer jumped away from Olivia, up off the bed and to the other side of the room, as if he had been caught by Livvy's parents seducing their daughter. Away from her, his head cleared and he wondered what in the hell he had been doing. He knew better than that. It was just as his father had warned him when he was a boy. Kissing led to touching, touching to more serious things, and before you knew it some girl with a pretty face was pregnant and you were stuck in a marriage you sure hadn't been thinking of when you'd stolen that first kiss.

Livvy looked sleepy, dreamy, confused, as if she were having trouble returning to the here and the now. He'd have liked to kick himself for what he was doing to her. Not to mention what he was doing to himself.

"What is it, boy?" he asked, shoving his. hands in his pockets to hide what would have been obvious to someone just a little older than his nephew.

"Josie wants to know if Aunt Liv'll read to her even if her leg hurts."

Livvy was watching Spencer, looking for signs of what he wanted from her. "Yeah," he said on her behalf. "Tell Josie to come in here when she's all ready for bed. And tell Louisa she's to get her aunt whatever she needs while we're gone."

He reached down into his dresser drawer and pulled out
Transmissions of Life
, happy to be getting it out of his home. He held it up to Livvy as if to prove to her that he was right, but her eyes were closed, the very tip of her tongue escaping her mouth and pressed tightly between her lips.

"Don't get out of this bed for anything. I'll be back later," he said, and headed for the door without looking back. He knew he'd be seeing the hollow of her neck the whole way to his brother-in-law's house, feeling the smoothness of her leg, tasting the warmth of her lips. That would be torture enough.

Long as the trip was to Sacotte Farm, the way back seemed twice as long. And the visit with Remy and Bess, brief though he had made it, had done nothing to calm his frayed nerves. The two of them seemed as frustrated as he was, jumping at casual touches, snapping at innocent words.

Now, his home just down the road, all Spencer could think about was spending another night in the same bed as the lilac princess. He couldn't do it. Not and keep the promises he'd made himself.

"Tell Aunt Liv I had to go in to town," he said as he pulled the wagon up in front of the house and Neil jumped down.

"You want me to come with you?" Neil offered, that eager face smiling up at him. For Spencer it was simply the last straw.

They all wanted a piece of him, and he had none to give. Any part of him that could belong to someone else was dead and buried at the Maple Stand Belgian Cemetery. And the sooner they all got used to that fact, the better.

"No, I don't want you coming with me," he said to the boy. "I don't want anything more than to be left alone. Get inside now."

The boy, dejected, walked slowly up the porch steps and turned to wave. Spencer gave him a slight nod, more than he intended, but less than would satisfy the boy, and yelled at Curly George to get a move on.

Lord, he thought, the back end of George swaying in front of him, why didn't they understand what it was he needed from them? It seemed simple enough to him. If they would just all leave him alone and let him be miserable, he'd be happy.

It wasn't until he got to the Lucky Clover Saloon that he realized where he was headed, nor what it was he had in mind for his evening's pleasure. Jumping down from the wagon, he sighed heavily and headed for the hottest place in Maple Stand.

That wasn't, he had to admit, saying much. Maple Stand was a small town, even by Door County standards. A lumber mill, a mercantile, a tavern, a post office, and a bank. That was about it, except for the church and the Lucky Clover, tacked on to the back of Grace Linden's house on the edge of town. Anything went at Grace's—gambling, drinking, and, if Grace was in the mood and you had enough cash, even she was available.

The women of Maple Stand all knew it, but typical of the women he knew, they pretended the place didn't exist. The men, on the other hand, pretended they did things there that Spencer didn't quite believe they did. After all, Grace was still alive, wasn't she?

There was, to Spencer's mind, only one thing wrong with the Lucky Clover, and it wasn't Grace or the gambling, or the liquor, which put to shame the beer and wine served at the tavern. No, it was the fact that it was too damn crowded, most nights, to get drunk in peace. There was always someone wanting to tell Spencer his troubles and interfering with Spencer drowning his own. Not like the tavern, which was spacious and fine for a social drink, the Lucky Clover was a tiny hole in the wall meant for hard drinkers bent on getting drunk.

This night was no exception. Among the crowd, which was two deep at the bar, was Charlie Zephin and that fop who had been in the wagon with Livvy. Makebreath, or whatever the hell his name was. If there'd been another place to get a real drink, Spencer would have turned around and left the Lucky Clover in a second. But Sturgeon Bay was a hell of a long distance going, and as drunk as he wanted to get, too far coming back home.

"Scotch, Gracie," he said when he caught her eye. He motioned with his thumb and his forefinger, indicating a good-size glass.

Gracie nodded and then under her breath said something to Charlie, who turned around and looked at Spencer with glassed-over eyes. Spencer gave him a tight nod and studied the handsome man with him, wondering how attractive Livvy must have found him. Spencer had no illusions about himself. He was getting too heavy, his hair was too long, too gray, and he was too used up. But this man was fresh and lively and he had a twinkle in his eye that had gone out of Spencer's years ago.

He watched as Charlie pointed him out, nodding and no doubt telling whatever his name was that he was Olivia Williamson's husband.

The scotch beat Makebreath to him by half a minute and Spencer had already downed it before the man even got a chance to extend his hand.

"WayIon Makeridge at your service," the man said, bowing slightly.

It seemed to Spencer that more than a few eyes were on the pair. In fact, the men on either side of him had backed up slightly, as if to give them room. That should have been a warning to Makeridge, but some people missed the subtleties of life. They needed to be hit over the head, so to speak.