Cinderfella (15 page)

It wasn't an option he considered for long.
No choice.
That would make for a miserable marriage all around, now wouldn't it?

She made a funny little noise, more a squeak than a snore, and stirred beneath the quilt. If she was mortified at the memory of a childish runny nose, what would she say if he told her she made odd noises in her sleep?

He ached for her, physically and somewhere deep inside, and still he smiled. Charmaine wouldn't be here long, but while she was here life would not be dull.

 

 

 

 

 

Eleven

 

To everyone's surprise, it was Elmo who offered cheerfully to go to town to collect Charmaine's belongings. Clothes, shoes, personal items — she'd left it all behind when Ash had tossed her over his shoulder and carried her out of the house.

Charmaine considered riding to town with Elmo, but she didn't want to face her father just yet, and the idea of enduring the long ride to town with Elmo was more than she could bear at the moment. She'd no doubt be entertained by more stories about his various aches and pains, and the very idea was more than she could stand right now. Nathan asked to ride along, as he had a telegram to send, and the two of them set out shortly after breakfast.

Ash Coleman, that insensitive lout, had been gone from the house when she'd finally awakened. His bedding had been rolled up and stored behind a wide chest of drawers, there where no one was likely to spot it through the open bedroom door. The blanket and flat pillow were neatly folded, crisp and taut as if they'd not been touched. Charmaine wondered, once or twice as the morning passed, if Ash had gotten any sleep at all.

She didn't want another confrontation, but there were a few things they needed to get settled, and the sooner the better. Tempting as it was, she couldn't simply ignore the situation and the fact that Ash was her husband, and running away was not an option.

All morning she silently rehearsed what she would say when she saw him. Pacing in the room where she'd slept, she mouthed the words and used her hands for emphasis. Sitting in the rocking chair before the fire while Verna chattered away, she went over the words in her mind once again. She practiced her most austere posture and expression, and to complete the picture she pulled her hair into a tight bun at the back of her neck.

She expected Ash to come to the house for the noon meal, but he didn't. Oswald and Verna ate a hearty dinner, but Charmaine picked at the food on her plate, eating slowly, delaying, waiting. Even after Verna cleared the table, there was no sign of him.

“Doesn't Ash come to the house for dinner?” she asked as Verna retired to her rocking chair with a half-finished embroidery sampler. Oswald was already deeply involved in his newest novel.

Verna smiled coyly. “Missing your groom already? How very precious.”

Missing her groom?
Precious!
Was the woman crazy? Didn't she remember the wedding at all? Charmaine shook her head gently, but Verna didn't seem to notice. “Surely he's hungry.”

Verna squinted at her sampler, which was, Charmaine noted, a mess of knots and ill-formed letters. And why was she working on a piece of embroidery when there were dishes and laundry to be done? The layer of dirt by the front door could use a broom, too.

“Ash usually takes a couple of biscuits with him when he's going to be away from the house all day,” Verna said without a hint of concern.

“A couple of biscuits? That hardly seems sufficient for a man who works so hard. . . . ”

Verna placed her embroidery in her lap and looked Charmaine square in the eye. “You know, Ash does work much too hard. Now that you're married, you should convince him to move to town and take up with your father and that prosperous ranch of his.”

“Could you and the boys handle everything here without him?” Charmaine asked, certain that they couldn't.

“Good heavens, no. We'd have to come to town with you.” She smiled. “We're family, you know.”

“I know,” Charmaine said softly.

“When you marry one Coleman, you get the lot of us.”

Charmaine had a stray and unkind thought that perhaps she really
should
have allowed her father to shoot Ash.

“Where is Ash working today, do you know?”

Verna gave Charmaine another sickening coy smile. “I really don't know. . . . ”

“He's fixing that fence on the east edge of the property,” Oswald interrupted without looking up from his book. “I believe he said he expected to be out there most of the day.”

A couple of biscuits were certainly not sufficient for a man of Ash's size who did physical labor all day. “Perhaps I should take him something to eat.”

Verna waved her hand lazily. “I'm sure he'll be fine. He always is.”

Charmaine would not be put off. She left Verna and Oswald, and rummaged through the kitchen for a sufficient meal. She packed leftover fried chicken and an apple and a large piece of pie, arranging it all in a basket she found in the pantry.

“I was saving that for Elmo.”

Charmaine turned around to find Verna sulking in the kitchen doorway. “I'm sure he and Nathan will eat while they're in town. Mother will insist.”

“But that's his favorite, custard pie.”

What could only be called indignation almost overcame Charmaine. How dare this woman deny Ash sufficient food? He worked hard, he put the food on their table, and Verna was whining about a piece of pie? She refrained, with great effort, from telling Verna that Elmo looked as if he could do with a little less pie. “Make another,” she said with a bright smile.

Verna parted her lips as if she had something to say, but she evidently thought twice. She closed her mouth without saying a word.

 

He would almost swear that someone had purposely destroyed this section of fence. Haley? Not his style. Oswald or Elmo? No, this required too much physical effort for either of his stepbrothers to accomplish. Verna? He could almost smile at the thought of her tearing into the fence and knocking down the post.

Ash had stopped just long enough to wipe his sweaty face on a sleeve when he saw Charmaine picking her way through the tall grass, the skirt of her plain green wedding dress in one hand, a small basket in the other.

He'd half-expected her to make a quiet escape while he was away from the house, to make her way to Salley Creek, beg borrow or steal a ticket to Boston, and be gone by the time he got home for supper.

Unreasonably, he was glad she was still here.

She dropped her skirt and lifted a hand to shade her eyes. “Hello,” she said as she resumed her trek. “I brought you something to eat.”

“I already ate.”

“I know,” she said shortly. “Biscuits. What kind of meal is that for a working man?”

Charmaine Haley — Charmaine
Coleman
— always managed to bewilder him. Last night she'd told him, in so many words, to go to hell. Today she was bringing him food and chastising him for not eating enough. Why did she care what and how much he ate?

“Besides,” she said as she reached him. “We need to talk, and I thought it might be best to get this out of the way . . . privately.”

Here it comes, he thought as he took the basket from her. She wasn't going to stay, but at least she was going to be honest with him about it. She picked a grassy spot that was high and dry, and sat down with her feet tucked under her skirt.

Ash sat down a couple of feet away and started removing food from the basket. She'd thought of everything, down to a plate and utensils, a neatly folded linen napkin, and a jar of cool tea.

“Go ahead,” he said calmly, studying the food instead of Charmaine.

“You can eat first,” she said almost shyly. “You must be hungry.”

Ah, she was putting it off, delaying the inevitable, and that was unlike her. “I don't have all day. I'll eat, you talk.”

“It's about this . . . marriage.” She said the word
marriage
as if it truly pained her, as if it tasted bitter in her mouth.

“What about it?” He picked at the chicken.

Charmaine sighed, and Ash lifted his head to look at her instead of the food. Why did she have to be so beautiful? If she were ugly or even plain, maybe he could rouse some indifference. If she didn't look so damned delicate, maybe he wouldn't feel the need to protect her. If she didn't look so fragile, maybe he wouldn't be so certain she didn't belong on this farm.

“We really haven't had time to discuss any . . . details of our relationship.”

“Details?”

Charmaine sighed deeply, frustrated and slightly indignant. What did she expect of him? That he could read her mind? Hell, he almost could. She hated it here, she hated him, she was looking for a way out.

“Last night you said you had no intention of staying, so why are you still here?”

She fidgeted and bit her bottom lip before answering. “I don't know. What am I supposed to do?”

“You're asking me?”

He ate while Charmaine hemmed and hawed and said a lot of nothing, mostly about how they hadn't had time to get to know one another properly, and managing the entire time not to look him directly in the eye. When he'd finished the meal she brought him, which only took a few minutes, he repacked the basket, wiped his face and hands, and moved to sit beside his wife.

“Charmaine.” He took her chin in his hand and made her look at him. “Say it. Spit it out. Nothing you say will surprise me, I promise you.”

“Marital continence,” she blurted, and then she turned an alarming shade of red.

“What?”

She took a deep breath before speaking, lifted her chin in a pose that was almost defiant. “There's a higher union to be known in a truly modern marriage than that of . . . of the physical relationship. A husband and wife can and should be spiritual partners rather than . . . rather than. . . . ”

“I lied,” Ash said as he dropped his hand from her chin. “You can surprise me.”

“I should have Howard send along a selection of manuals explaining the benefits of a pure marriage.”

“No, thank you.”

“He explains things much more clearly than I can.”

“Wonderful.”

“It's for your own good.”

Hell, he could tell she believed it. Her eyes were wide and clear and true, and as blue as the spring sky on a cloudless day. “My own good,” he repeated.

“It's a well-known fact that seminal fluid comes from the brain,” she said primly. “It's best not to waste such a precious commodity, but rather to conserve it so it can be expended more constructively, in thought.”

“I should be a genius,” he muttered.

“What?” she leaned forward and just an inch or so closer to him.

“Nothing,” he said more clearly. “What you're saying is that you don't want me to touch you.”

“Well . . . yes.” She squirmed on the hard ground. “I didn't think you would object.”

“You didn't?”

“Last night you didn't . . . I mean, you slept on the floor and you didn't . . . You don't even seem to
like
me very much.”

“It's not exactly been my lifelong dream to spend my wedding night with an unwilling bride who cried herself to sleep,” he interrupted harshly. “And it's not that I don't like you, Charmaine, it's just that you're not exactly the kind of woman I'd planned to marry.”

She intended to stay? He should be angry, but he found there was a touch of relief somewhere deep inside that he couldn't deny. So she wasn't practical or hardworking . . . so she was as flighty as his mother had ever been. . . .
 

“I'm sure there have been other women in your life.” She spoke with a no nonsense tone, but a becoming blush rose to her cheeks. “I know how difficult it is for men to contain their animal impulses. But it's for your own good, I promise you. You'll thank me, one day.”

Maybe, but not for
this.

“Eventually I'll want children,” he said.

She paled, so quickly and so completely that he was afraid she would faint.

“Where do babies fit into your
pure
marriage?”

“When the time comes, and I think it will be several years before we're ready for children, we will do what we must — but no more than once a month. We'll wait after each encounter to see if we've been successful.”

“Sounds like fun,” he muttered, and this time she heard him.

“It's not supposed to be fun,” she said sternly.

“Odd, I always heard different.”

She shot to her feet. “I can't have a civilized conversation with you. Why did I expect differently?”

He jumped up to cut off her escape. “Who filled your head with these ridiculous ideas?” She tried to step past him, but he was wider and faster and she had no chance. “You talk about the marriage bed as if it was medicine to be endured, just another unpleasant chore to undertake at the prescribed time. What about pleasure? Passion? Tell me Charmaine, have you already forgotten what it felt like to be kissed?”

“It was the dancing, and I think there must've been champagne in the punch,” she protested as she tried again to sidestep him.

He grabbed her, a hand on her arm and another around her waist. “I didn't have any punch, and neither did you. At least, not after I arrived,” he whispered, and suddenly she was very still.

“I was weak —”

He silenced her with a kiss she didn't want, found her lips with his and put a stop to her nonsense. She was stiff in his arms, unresponsive, but only for a moment. Her eyelids fluttered and closed, her lips softened, and then she melted. Her body against his, her mouth against his.

There was a maddening little noise deep in her throat that almost pushed him over the edge. She was his wife, and if she wasn't willing now she would be in a few minutes. He could feel her falling toward surrender, and by God he wanted her.