The Marriage Bed (30 page)

"Oh, don't," he pleaded, reaching a hand up to thwart her, realizing how dirty he was, and stopping. "Leave it loose, Livvy. Please."

"Spencer," she said, crossing her arms over her chest as if he'd caught her naked. "What are you doing here in the middle of the night painting the barn?"

It seemed a direct enough question to her, and certainly the obvious one. He, however, seemed surprised she would ask it.

"Why am I here?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

He nodded.

She looked up again at the letters on the barn. "Is that a note?"

He nodded again. "I saw you sleeping. I didn't want to wake you."

"So you thought you'd just leave me a note?"

He brightened and nodded.

"On the barn?"

He shrugged.

"In paint?"

This time he just lifted one shoulder.

He was insane, That was the only explanation.

"Why don't you just tell me and save yourself the trouble?" she asked, waving at the paint, the barn, the puddle he was stepping in.

"Tell you?"

He was staring at her chest, or was it her neck?

"Spencer!"

Now his gaze dropped to the ground. In a Voice that took her back to their childhoods, he said quietly, "I wanted to ask you to put the locket back on."

She had seen him as a boy. She had seen him through triumph and tragedy. He looked as vulnerable standing in front of her with paint dripping down his face as he had at ten when his dog had gotten caught in a bear trap and there'd been nothing he could do until his father had come to free it.

Her arms spread of their own accord and he raced into them coating her with his paint, smearing her face as he kissed her over and over again. He left his mark every place he touched, her bodice, the buttons of her dress. She imagined the handprints on her behind and smiled at the outrageousness.

"You're grinning! Liv, you're happy!"

Maybe, maybe a little, she conceded silently. Maybe, all things considered, a life with Spencer wouldn't be the hell she had already known.

His eyes glistened in the dark as he took her hand and started leading her toward the trough.

"You're a mess, Livvy-love."

"No worse than you, Spencer," she shot back, beginning to drag her feet as they got closer and closer to the pump. What did he have in mind, anyway?

"Well, this dress has to go," he said, working the last of the buttons and pushing it off her shoulders. "Don't be shy. It's full of . . . Oh, look what I've done now. I've gotten it on your underthings."

He didn't look the least bit sorry.

In fact, he wasn't. He was just disappointed that he had one more layer of clothes to dispose of before he could run his painted hands against her naked flesh. Just the idea had him so randy he could barely move.

"Spencer," Livvy said, looking around her uncomfortably, "I can't just take off everything out here. Even if you did turn around like a gentleman and . . ."

"I'm not turning." Not ever again. No more screens, no more turning down the lamp. He wanted to see in the light of day every perfect inch of the woman who made life worth living. He stood staring at her, then finally shrugged and pulled off his own shirt. "Whew, it's cold," he said as he splashed the water against his chest and up his arms. He unbuttoned his pants and shimmied out of them. He looked down at what she was able to make out in the darkness and guessed it was as apparent to her as it was to him. "Well, I guess you can tell I'm glad to see you."

She didn't answer him, but her eyes were riveted to his summer balbriggans and the tent that formed between his legs.

"Come on, Liv," he said finally, going around her so that he could help her out of her clothes without being in front of her face. "That a girl. Now the other arm. Good girl. Lift your leg. Here, hold on to me."

"Just the dress, Spencer. And only because I can't go back into the house full of paint . . ." She reached behind her for balance and grazed his manhood without even knowing it as she reached for his arm. It seemed to him he had two choices. Take her then and there, or die.

A light went on in the house and Remy's voice carried down to the trough. "You better have a good excuse for coming in this late," he yelled.

Livvy grabbed up her clothing against her chest and stared at him with wide frightened eyes.

"Come home with me," he begged.

She shook her head and his heart dropped.

"Why?"

"I can't think around you," she admitted, her eyes on her bare toes.

He couldn't hide the smile. "You can't?"

She shook her head.

"Yeah?" He let out a whistle of pure pleasure. "Well, all right!"

"Who's out there?" Remy yelled from the window.

"Go!" she whispered as if her big brother were a threat to his very hide. Didn't she know that nothing could hurt him anymore except her?

"Go!" She pushed his pile of clothing at him, all the while trying to keep herself hidden from his hungry eyes.

"Liv?" Remy's voice boomed in the darkness. His upper torso hung out of the window looking for his sister. "That you?"

"It's me, Sacotte."

"Williamson? What in the . . .Liv? You all right? I'm coming down . . ." The last of his words were lost as he ducked back into his room.

"Go!" Livvy urged him again. "Please, Spencer."

He grabbed his wife around the waist and pulled her tight to him, her arms in the way, bundled with her dress. He pressed his lips to her in an urgent kiss, one that didn't ask permission, one that didn't apologize.

"I'm leaving, Sacotte," he yelled toward the house. Then he put a finger on the tip of Livvy's nose and whispered, "I'll see you tomorrow," released her, and made sure that she had her footing. He had taken her words, and her breath, away, and he whistled all the way down the path.

But his wet chest was cold now that Livvy wasn't pressed up against it, and his house was dark, and his bed was still empty.

What in hell, he wondered, had he been so happy about?

Chapter Twenty-two

"Don't give me that stuff about how it's supposed to be confidential," Neil said, so angry that he was actually spitting at his cousin Philip as they stood facing each other on the porch. "Tell me what it said. Now."

Philip was bigger than him, maybe by half a foot, and by a good twenty or thirty pounds. Neil didn't care. He didn't care, either, that it was against the law for Philip to tell him what was in the telegram his father had sent to his Aunt Liv.

What scared him wasn't Philip's size or his strength. It was that Philip wasn't gloating or lording over him the fact that he knew something that Neil didn't. If anything, Philip seemed uncharacteristically sympathetic, laying a hand on Neil's shoulder, which he quickly shrugged off.

"Is he coming back?" Neil demanded, his chest heaving with each heavy breath he tried to take.

Philip shook his head.

"Then what?"

Philip gestured beyond him toward the screen door. "Louisa in there?"

"I don't know where she is," Neil said, "and I don't care."

"I don't want her coming out here and trying to kill me," Philip said, looking over Neil's shoulder and cupping his eyes to see into the darkened room. "You know what Aunt Liv always says about confusing the bearer with the news."

"Well, Aunt Liv's full of stupid thoughts these days," Neil said, letting his annoyance with his aunt get the better of him. All of this was her fault, and if she really loved him and his sisters the way she claimed, they'd all be back at Uncle Spencer's, where they belonged. And there probably wouldn't even be a telegram from his father to worry about. "What did he say, Philip? Does he want Aunt Liv to send us out to him?"

He doubted that possibility, for there wasn't any profit in it for his father. But the thought frightened him so much that he had to ask.

"He said that after the farm is sold Aunt Liv should send him her share and his share and then come out to California.'' Philip looked at the ground and chewed at the inside of his lip.

"Just her?"

"No, he said all come out, I think."

"Who's all? Did he say? Did he mean to visit? What exactly did he say?"

Philip raised his eyes then, sad eyes that glistened with the warmth that Neil knew the older boy felt for him, and which, despite their bickering, he returned.

Philip swallowed hard and then spoke quietly, repeating the words he must have memorized from the telegram. "Perhaps your separation from Williamson for the best. Your share and mine could start a business up North. You and the children could join me. Have always felt deep affection for you just as I had for your sister."

Neil felt the bile rise in his throat. He sat down on the porch settee and stared off at the orchard that would be destroyed by the railroad's coming and wondered why nothing was ever the way it should be.

"I took down the words myself," Philip was saying. Neil .heard him, but the words seemed to have no meaning. "Mr. Zephin called out the letters as they came over the wire and I wrote them down."

Neil nodded.

"You all right?" Philip tried to sit down next to him, but Neil had plunked down in the middle of the bench and there was not enough room on either side.

"Stop it, Louisa," Aunt Liv yelled from inside the house. "Stop it right now."

"I hate him," Louisa shouted. "He had no right to go through my things."

"What are you hiding, anyways, Lou Lou?" Thom-Tom said.

"Don't call me that! I don't have a stupid name like yours." He heard his sister's feet on the stairs and then her parting words. "And I hate living here."

"Well," Aunt Liv yelled up after her, "have some patience. We won't be here much longer."

A chill ran down Neil's spine. He looked at Philip, who suddenly found a knot in the porch floor of keen interest. He thought about what life with his father had been like and wondered just how Aunt Liv's presence would change things.

There had been women in his father's life after his mother's death, women who had babied him and women who had ignored him. Neil had seen them let his father touch them, fondle them. He'd seen them do things in the darkness with his father that even with the distance of time still made his skin crawl and his stomach turn.

He thought of his Aunt Olivia, soft, kind, and he knew that his Aunt Bess was right about her. She was in love with Uncle Spencer. She had to be. She just had to realize it. Before it was too late.

Voices droned on inside the house, his sister's joining the others once again. The talk had moved on to Emma Zephin, as it had over and over in the past few days. Neil was sick of hearing about how happy Miss Zephin was now that she was dead. If his sister wasn't snapping at someone, she was turning Emma into some sort of saint. And there was too much talk about womanhood, too. And Louisa being on the brink. Aunt Olivia had even asked him to make allowances for his sister and her sudden bursts of temper, bringing up her being a young woman as if that gave her license to be mean to the very people that loved her.

Aunt Olivia forgave her every outburst. Somehow, despite his sister's abominable behavior, his aunt had come to love her. It shouldn't have surprised him, for didn't she love Josie, who'd nearly decapitated her on the night they'd arrived? And he had no doubt that his aunt loved him, as well. She'd do anything for Louisa and Josie and him. . .

The idea came to him all at once, like the Lord himself had put it into his head. He grabbed Philip's hand and ran off the porch, half dragging his cousin behind him until they were far away enough from the house so that there would be no chance they were overheard.

"What bee's up your behind?" Philip asked, loosening himself from Neil's grasp and squinting in the late afternoon sun.

"You could get more of that telegraph paper, couldn't you?" Neil asked.

"Sure," Philip answered, not catching on. "Why?"

Neil felt the smile .crawl slowly up the edge of his mouth until his grin was wide enough to split his lips. "What do you think Aunt Liv would do if she thought Uncle Spencer agreed to send us back to our pa?"

"Looks like we're gonna see, doesn't it?" Philip asked.

Neil shook his head. "I don't mean her, too. I mean what if she thought that she'd be staying here and just us kids would be going back?"

Philip scrunched up his face as if to say the idea was ridiculous. "Aunt Liv wouldn't just let you all go. I think she'd go back to Uncle Spencer before . . ." His smile mirrored Neil's own as the idea dawned on him. "Ma," he yelled toward the house, "I gotta go back to town. I promised Mr. Zephin I'd watch things this afternoon."

Neil spit into his hand and extended it. Philip did the same. Solemnly they shook hands and then let out a whoop of unadulterated joy. He might not be able to live on his grandfather's acres and tend his orchard, that might be out of his control, but he and his sisters could surely find a home with Aunt Liv and Uncle Spence once they made both of them realize the alternative was either Uncle Spence losing Aunt Liv or Aunt Liv losing the three children she loved.

"Take the pies as long as you're going," Aunt Liv yelled from the house. "And tell Charlie he can apply the seventy-five cents to what I owe him for the breakage from the other day."

"Uncle Spencer paid him for that," Philip said as he and Neil passed their aunt on the way to the kitchen to get the pies.

"What?" she asked, grabbing Philip's sleeve and spinning him around.

"Uncle Spencer told Mr. Zephin to put it on his bill," Philip said with a shrug.

Aunt Olivia, her mouth forming a small O, let him go and said something about having to go over there and pay him back. "I suppose I could do his laundry," she said absentmindedly. "Lord knows he isn't doing it himself."

"I asked you if you thought that Emma Zephin is in hell,' Louisa said to their aunt with apparent exasperation at being ignored.

Neil sighed loudly and Philip gave a snort. They were both sick of the subject of Emma Zephin and raced each other to the kitchen door.

"No," Aunt Liv said, and Neil backed up slightly to hear her reasoning. After all, Miss Zephin had killed herself. Neil thought that surely she would go to hell for doing that.

"I don't really believe so. Emma was a good woman who lived a good life and had a weak moment. I think the Lord, who made life so difficult for her in the first place, Would have to forgive one moment in favor of a lifetime of bearing what turned out to be the unbearable."

"Really?" Louisa said very skeptically. "Then she's in heaven? Even after killing her own self?"

Aunt Liv looked over at Louisa distractedly. "I don't suppose we'll know for sure until we die ourselves, Louisa." She reached for her bonnet beside the door and fastened it beneath her chin. "Would you mind watching Josie for a little while?" she asked.

Louisa shook her head. Aunt Liv rushed out the door and was halfway down the path by the time the boys looked out the kitchen window after her.

"Let's go," Philip said, picking up the basket of pies and then laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"Aunt Liv should have taken these with her. Uncle Spencer's bought every pie she's baked!"

"You mean he's paying a quarter for . . ." Neil began to laugh himself. Aunt Bess was right. They loved each other, they just needed someone to give them a push back in the right direction. And he and Philip would provide that little shove with one slightly yellow piece of telegraph paper.

They were still laughing as they poured out the front door and nearly ran smack into Aunt Liv, on her way back in.

"Maybe I'll just take one of these to your uncle," she said, reaching into the basket that Philip was holding. "I suppose I owe him something for paying my debts."

Neil tried to keep his giggles under control. He could see Philip struggling just as hard, maybe harder.

"Something tickling your funnybones?" Aunt Liv asked, looking at them suspiciously. Her cheeks glowed with the heat and, Neil was beginning to think, the prospect of seeing his uncle. This was going to be a piece of cake. "Your uncle ought to appreciate this pie," she said as she dismissed them and hurried down the steps. "I bet he hasn't had a decent meal in weeks."

Holding their breaths until she was far enough down the path to be out of earshot, they hoped, the boys convulsed with laughter.

This was a good place, Neil thought, sobering for a moment. He would truly like to stay.

The most beautiful woman in the world was sashaying down his path. For a moment Spencer thought she was just a mirage, a product of his wishes or a memory from the previous night. Just in case she was real, he hurriedly wiped his hands on his pants and ran down to close the barn door, where the last coat of paint on Neil's bed was drying. Another week and they would all be done. Could she resist him then and turn away from a home for them all?

He stood by the fence, Curly George nuzzling him and nosing him encouragingly in his wife's direction. When she was close enough for him to see her face, she smiled tentatively. "Hello," she said, looking shy and girlish and holding out to him . . .Lord, no! A pie.

"What's this?" he said, forcing a smile as he took the all-too-familiar tin plate from her hands. "Don't tell me it's a pie!"

George snickered and backed away, sauntering over toward Peaches with a quick look back that seemed to Spencer to be full of amusement. Damn horse was getting too human for Spencer's comfort. It must be all the hours they were spending together, Curly George listening to Spencer's troubles and his plans.

"I've been selling them, you know," she said proudly.

"You don't need to, Liv," he said, and watched her smile fall. "But if it makes you happy . . ."

"I'm contributing, Spencer. Not quite pulling my own weight, but I'm not just a burden on someone else."

"You've never been a burden, not to anyone. Especially not to me."

Women. They carried the whole world, one way or another, and they still felt like they weren't worth a hill of beans unless they got paid for their troubles. And troubles they had plenty of.

"Well," Livvy said, "I wanted to thank you for taking care of the bill at Zephin's." She was squinting those big brown eyes into the sun and he shifted slightly, placing her in his shade. "Oh, thanks." She lowered her hand from her eyes and flailed it around a bit before finally clasping it with her other one.

"Have you ever known me to shirk my responsibilities?" he asked, offended that she doubted he,would pay their debts. The shock on her face made him repeat the question in his mind, and he closed his eyes and winced. "Financially," he amended, wanting to smack himself.

He thought perhaps he should start stuffing his mouth with sheepskin. That way if he managed to get a word out around the stuff, he knew that at least his foot would be comfortable in its inevitable home.

"Well," she said awkwardly. "I just wanted to thank you." She looked around, her eyes taking in all the things he had let slide in the effort to get all the furniture ready before Sacotte Farm was sold. He wanted her to be sure she and the children were the most important things in the world to him, and he didn't think just his words would do it.

"I've been kind of busy," he said, kicking the spoiled bucket of milk he'd forgotten to bring in after he'd milked Miss Lily. Liv winced at the smell.

"Animals all fine?" she asked, peering beyond him at George and Peaches.

He nodded. "Looks like Peaches is in foal," he said, quickly moving to place the pie on the porch, thereby avoiding looking at her face. Being in the family way was a delicate subject between the two of them. He thought that maybe he'd better make room in that mouth for his other foot.

"Really?" she asked, her voice full of the wonder that always made her seem younger than she was. "Are you sure?"

He whistled to the horses and they sauntered over, hoping for a handful of oats. Patting Peaches's side gently, he told Liv that she hadn't gone into heat again, and left it at that. In the moments of quiet he thought about how each day when he checked Peaches he hoped that there was still no sign of her time.